Wine Rack, Part 6 - Done!

After nine months of intermittent work and many interruptions for other projects, the wine rack is finally done, and installed in our kitchen:

The rack was sized to fit the space, and it worked out great. Because it is so shallow compared to its width, it is actually screwed to the wall to keep it stable. The painting in the shelf area was a last-minute idea of Mary Ellen's - it was inherited from our late friend Gene Oliver, with whom we shared many a glass of wine. The finish matches the rest of the kitchen perfectly, since I built and stained those cabinets too.

At the end of Part 5, the rack was "dry fit" together. From there, it was a straightforward process of staining and finishing that is not very interesting to picture. Just a couple of photos to show some good ideas. I stained and sprayed varnish on the entire piece before gluing it up. On a piece with 36 joints to align, glue goes everywhere and is a real struggle to eradicate. If you miss some, it makes a blemish in the finish.

Pre-staining and finishing is the usual solution for that, but you have to ensure that you don't get the finish anywhere that you actually want the glue to stick. For the mortises and biscuit slots, I used foam "rope" that's designed to fill air gaps around windows and such:

For the shelves, I needed tape just a bit narrower than anything I had, so I used a cutting gauge to custom-make tape at the correct width:

Once the sides were correctly masked, finishing was easy:

I glued all the shelving and wine racks to one side, and then waited until my good friend Lem was visiting from Atlanta. He helped me with the nerve-wracking final side. Remember, on each side there are 18 things to align at once, and the glue is drying as you work! But it all went very smoothly. We used my new (and extravagantly priced) Bessey parallel clamps to ensure that the joints were tight around the drawer box:

After that, I added the back, built and fitted the drawer (twice - the first one wasn't square), and made and fitted a false front for the drawer. All done, and John Zimmerman helped me move it to the house. I made a little block to tie it to the wall, and loaded it with all the wine we had stashed in various places. Mary Ellen and I shared most of a bottle of Prosecco to celebrate!