Wine storage cabinet plans or design
peg3nut
| Posted in Project Plans/CAD Software on
I would like to make a piece of furniture to store as few as 50, or as many as about 120 bottles of wine for my son, but I’ve not seen any designs or plans for a wine storage cabinet. Does anyone have any available informatioin? Thank you.
Replies
Will this be a piece of furniture, or will it be out of sight -- as in a closet or cellar? If it's the latter, I may be able to help you. Jim
Jimma:
Thanks. Sorry for the delay; we've been away for the holidays. Yes, the cabinet will be out in the open. My son has an unfinished basement, which will be finished this year and the cabinet will sit out in one part a room devoted to a "bistro" type atmosphere.
Peg -
Here are some pictures of a wine cabinet I made early this year. They may help.
The upper section of the microwave cabinet had racks for wine glasses (last picture)
Thats some nice cabinetry dave.
Nice job, Dave, as are the cabinets in general. Tell me, was it the intention to open that wine cabinet from the kitchen side or the other side of the counter?
Thanks, Kiks & Jimma -
That was a truly fun job!! When I first met them in mid-January, they needed to completely remodel their kitchen by April 7th. They had overseas business guests coming and the schedule was a "do or die" thing.
At first, my involvement was just the cabinet work. We planned, designed and built:
a replacement island (5'x5' with a glass top),
new wine and microwave cabinets to replace some existing upper cabinets. (the wine cabinet door has a custom-etched glass panel with rope lighting inside the face frame.)
a new faceframe and doors to reconfigure an existing floor-to-ceiling cabinet for a wall oven and under-counter fridge.
some new doors and pull-out drawers for some existing cabinets.
I delivered and installed the island in early March, and got a call two days later when the new ice maker (installed by the GC) ran water all over the hardwood floors. Apparently, he didn't read the installation instructions and decided that a drain wasn't necessary. I had to run back up there (50 miles away) and remove the island so the flooring guy could fix the buckled flooring.
Then, the GC lost his cool and wanted to quit because of "the pressure". I wound up taking over about half of the project - including dealing with the manufacturer of the glass counter top. It was a custom top built in South Carolina and they hit a problem in the manufacturing process so it wasn't finished until late March. After a couple of semi-heated arguments, they air-freighted it to CA. Then, the installer said he needed a month to get it in so we had to find a different installer. The top went in on April 4th or 5th. I did the last of the trim-out on April 6th.
The owners wife had been in China on business for most of March and got home late on the 6th. She called me on the morning of the 8th and told me that she had been terrified that it wouldn't get done on time - and that it was even more than she had hoped for. That - and a VERY nice final check - made it all worthwhile - lol.
The door swing on the wine cabinet took quite a while to finalize. I had told the HO that he could have it either way - depending on what he thought was the most "logical". It took me about a week to build the wine and microwave cabinets and he had until I actually fit the door to decide what he wanted. When he finally called me, he was still a little "iffy", so I told him I wasn't going to answer my phone again until the door was done - lol.
The close-up of the wine cabinet answers my question, OK, but it also makes me want to say nice and double-nice. My son, who also does high-end finish work and is an occasional GC, makes me shudder when he tells me stories like yours of working with home owners and decorators. Right now he's working on a residence for a high-profile HO who can't visualize a dam thing, so has hired TWO decorators who seem to be in competition with each other to see who can cause the most indecision. Guess who has to take up the slack? I think your business is one of the craziest around. No wonder FLlW never listened to the client. Anyhow, I love your cabinet and hope it was worth it.
Nice cabinets, Dave.But that is not a good place for wine, especially if its good wine. Wine needs cool temps, not too dry, and darkness to age properly.This from one who grows his own Cabernet Sauvignon, makes wine from it and was in the retail wine biz in Miami for almost 20 years.John
It wouldn't have been my first choice for a location either, but I've found that I get more jobs - and more repeat business - if I present my ideas but let the customer make the final decision. It's funny how signing the checks gives them the idea that they're the boss - lol.
This HO is something of a wine snob and claimed to have several bottles of $200+ wine. His wine glasses cost around $25 each.
Just before I took the cabinet to my finisher (an absolute artist at matching existing stains/finishes), the HO decided he wanted a lock on the door. His teen aged kids had thrown a party and drank up some of his expensive wine so he wanted a lock. When I delivered the cabinets, I left the key in the lock so he could find it. I was back a couple of months later for another job and the key was still in the lock - and his daughter told me that it had never been moved. I dared her to lock it and hide the key, but she was chicken - lol.
Its his dime!
The final tab was well over a dime - lol
I'm sure, but I was speaking of his dime as relates to the $200 bottles of wine.
Right on, Pins! The client sounds more like a diletante than a real wine lover. Here's the sort of thing I recommend with cooling, and it's not even where you can see it! Jim/Orlando
Jimma -
Did you intend to post something about cooling wine? I would be most interested.
I built this piece a couple of years ago during a slow period. I wanted to use up some "scrap" and play with a two-tone look. It now sits in my family room and serves as a phone table/bookcase.
I have access to some salvaged old growth redwood and think that a similar piece would make a really neat wine cabinet. My only question would be a way to keep the wine cool.
Any ideas?
Nice cabinet, Dave. About the cooling issue, my advice is to consider a factory-made wine storage unit (cabinet) that is made expressly for that purpose. The reason I say this is because I'm not aware of any off-the-shelf cooling systems that are available that would work within a smallish cabinet along the lines of your example -- say a fifty-bottle size or thereabout. My familiarity is with larger cooling systems intended for closet-size or larger storage spaces. Red wines store best at temps in the fifties while white wines are usually kept at refrigerator temps, so there are a lot of manufacturers that make under-counter and larger stand-alone units for white wine storage, but not so many that make them for red wines in cabinet sizes. This gets to be a complicated subject when you start talking about really fine wines in the collector or expert category and whether you want to keep them in a "furniture" cabinet or a cellar or whatever. You can get some pieces, say buffet or sideboard size, that will keep both red and white wines at ideal temps, but I've never seen cooling units for this kind of application sold separately. My suggestion is to look through a catalog of wine storage supplies -- like IWA (iwawine.com) -- and see what's out there. If white wine is your preference especially, you'd be better off with a manufactured cabinet unless you're willing to commit to a larger space for storage. Good luck, Jim
This gets to be a complicated subject.....
Tell me about it - lol. One of my first "almost"-jobs after I went pro was for some folks that wanted to convert a room in their house into a wine cellar. IIRC, it would have held about 5000 bottles and was intended to be top of the line - redwood racking and cabinets, solid glass partition across the room, fancy lighting, a chilling unit to hold the room at 50*, and separate refrigerated cabinets for their white wines. The section of the room outside of the partition was to be a tasting room.
The more I dug into the job, the more I realized that this was WAY over my head. In my engineering days - when I had lots of contacts and resources - I would have been all over this one, but now it was just little old me - working out of my garage with my startup money coming out of my equityline. - lol.
I finally had to tell them that it was more than I could handle, gave them all my notes and information, and wished them well.
Well, Dave, I think you did the right thing, because even some "professionals" get in over their heads when it comers to wine cellars, partly because they need to know a lot about wine per se as well as how to build what's needed. A couple of years ago I thought about designing and building wine storage spaces after some local wine merchants urged me to get into it because a lot of their customers were asking for it. As a result, I contacted one of the premier companies (read that as very high end) in the business and they sent me a kit with their specs and contracts to be a local rep. Since I'm basically retired, it didn't interest me to the extent they required as their thing is to sell lots and lots of racking and coolers, etc. However, it was attractive. Had I been in the business of woodworking and knowing a bit about the subject, I probably would have been very tempted. Maybe you should look into it since you've got an interest in wine and have an engineering background and, I would guess, there are plenty of folks in California who could use some input on the subject (equals demand). I found several such outfits on the internet and had them send me stuff. Sorry, but I don't remember any of them by name. I thought it was getting pretty hard to come by clear redwood. I made mine out of cypress because both cedar and redwood were unavailable here. (Although I'm now glad as I think those would have been too aromatic for wine.)
I'm not really "into" wine although I spent a lot of time in the Napa wine country in the late 60's and early 70's. I was stationed in Vallejo and a trip to the wine country hitting the tasting rooms was a great way to "waste" a weekend. It wasn't a tourist trap in those days and the tasting was free!! These days, my favorite wine is a Cabernet by Fox Brook. At $1.99 +tax per bottle, I can buy it by the case. Maybe my palate is dead, but I like it better than any of the pricier wines I've had.
Good redwood is still available around here, but it's really pricey. That salvaged redwood I mentioned earlier is mostly old fencing. My buddy used to work with a fencing contractor and they ripped out lots of really old redwood fencing. He has a pile of the old boards at his ranch and some of it is absolutely gorgeous.
In case you're interested, I made this for my father-in-law last spring. I have another one that I need to finish to give him this winter sometime. Each cabinet holds about 120 bottles. The wood is soft maple and finish is dye, tung oil, shellac, and briwax. Ernie
EHobbs
Thanks. The cabinet looks beautiful and the finish is also great. I've gotten some good ideas from this discussion; never thoiught there would be so much interest in wine cabinets--as opposed to just wine shelves in a wine cellar.
Dave:
Thanks for the reply, and sorry for the delayed response; we've been gone for the holidays and finally have to get back to work. The cabinet you made is great and wouild fit into most settings. I appreciate the reply and am considering how to use those ideas.
Peg3nut
peg3nut,
Here is link to some free plans on Popular Woodworking's site. It will hold 24 bottles, but I can see were it could be modified to hold more. The only hitch is you have register on the site to view the free plans. Hope this helps.
Greg
Got in a hurry and forgot to add the link.
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/features/fea.asp?id=1328
Edited 12/18/2006 1:12 pm ET by spindle
Spindle: Thanks for the tip; I'll look at the site. Sorry for the delay--been gone for the holidays.
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