The Big Orange Box

I suppose I should have given this post a different title.  It was supposed to be about how to "scribe" the strip that goes between the cabinet and the wall.  Otherwise you end up with an uneven gap along the wall, as in the first photo.

That process is well described elsewhere - just google "scribe cabinets" and it will return a bunch of links (this one even shows how to make your own scribing tool!).  Done right, the strip, in this case the pillar, matches up perfectly with the profile of the wall resulting in no gap.

I ended up using my daughter's compass from geometry class because they sell a cr@ppy plastic one that won't hold it's setting at The Big Orange Box.

Also, I have a nice jack plane (big one in the photo), but wanted a one-handed block plane to do this scribing.  The only one they carried at The Big Orange Box was a "cheap" one (small one in the photo), so I had no other choice.

I wasn't thrilled with the performance of the little one, so I used my big one; the quote "this is not a precision tool" comes to mind.  Perhaps it will work better if I hone the cutting edge before its next use, but should I really have to mess with a new tool to get it to work right?

Then, to get the spacing uniform between the cabinets, I wanted some thin shims to use as spacers.  These would have been perfect.

So I went to the store looking to buy a few.  Ten should have been more than enough.  But as you can see, they come in bundles of one hundred.  There were several broken bundles in the store so grabbed what I needed and headed to the checkout.  I caused much puzzlement with several cashiers.  You see, the individual shims are not marked with a UPC barcode.  The could sell me 10 shims at the "bundle of 100" price.  Each!  That's $84.30 for those that are math challenged...  But dividing the case price by 100 was apparently too complicated.

Needless to say, those babies are still at the store and I found a different way to accomplish my goal.

I wonder if I'm going to have the same problem with these.  I need only one and The Big Orange Box only sells them in bags of twenty five...

I'm in there so often, the staff should shout my name when I walk in, like Norm from Cheers...

Perhaps my 76 cents will get spent where I can "Save Big Money"...

Man, I miss Seven Corners already.