I ran the PEX tubing some time ago, down through the wall from the attic, and left the ends a little long sticking out through a built-up hole in the wall, looking like this:
Before installing the sink cabinet, I cut a hole in the plywood back to clear the protruding wooden frame through which the PEX exits. On the floor of the cabinet, you can also see the plastic shutoff valves and the escutcheons for dressing them up. The valves are ceramic disc units, made of plastic by Uponor, which company makes the Pro-PEX fittings and the expandable PEX-a tubing I use, so they all play nice together. The plastic/ceramic valves are immune to the corrosion and pitting that often plague metal valves, and they also have a better flow rate. To open and close them, you twist a ring around the body (there's no handle per se). Moving along . . .
To support the three PEX tubes, I cut a piece of plywood to fit the frame, cut it in half, then clamped it together and drilled three 5/8" holes (the outside diameter of the tubing) where I wanted the tubes to end up. You can see the lower piece of this plywood sitting under the tubes (and both top and bottom, painted, in the photo below). In the photo above, I have cut the tubes to length, then slid on the escutcheons and the reinforcing rings used to attach the PEX fittings. At this point I used my tubing expansion tool to open up the ends of the tube, then quickly inserted the valves. (You may recall my little video from a past post which shows how this is done.)
Then I screwed the lower section of plywood in place, and fit the tubing in their cutouts. The two valves on the right are hot and cold for the sink, and the one on the left is hot water for the dishwasher.
Then the top piece of plywood goes on, firmly clamping the flexible tubing. This next photo shows everything painted and caulked. The yellow wire is for the dishwasher; it will later be terminated in a junction box. The vertical black ABS pipe is of course the drain for the sink, with a clean-out installed (a "Y" with a screw-on cap to make it easier to insert a snake to clear out any future clogs).
Back to the cabinets. Some of the maple trim is 1.5" wide, so in some places I had to glue on a 3/4" plywood doubler (see one clamped below). At the right end of the cabinet, there was a big gap that also needed some underlying structure (pieces of 2x4) to support the countertop (on top), and a wider piece of maple trim on the front.
The maple trim is glued on using biscuits to reinforce and position the joint (in most cases), and held in position with finish nails while the glue dries. I used a pneumatic finish nail gun which instantly shoots a nail in while the piece of wood is held in position; the old-fashioned way of pounding with a hammer typically knocks the wood out of alignment, and requires separate countersinking of the nail head. Here's my finish nailer:
The ends of the nails are coated with glue. The force of shooting them into the wood creates heat, which melts the glue, which ensures the nail will not easily pull out. The gun drives the nail below the surface, which can then be filled with plastic wood (wood putty).
This is the filled hole after sanding and two coats of polyurethane. The color is not an exact match, but the hole is so small, that you never notice it (really :-).
And finally, this is the cabinet ready for the countertop (and, as always, ready for a bunch of drawers).
I also need to finish installing the remaining baseboards, but I'll get to that before the countertop arrives (which I haven't ordered yet—that will likely happen the day after tomorrow). The countertop will be the subject of the next post. I've also been working on the baseboard in the pottery studio, and scraping eves/fascia outside the workshop, getting ready for paint, and the stucco paint, etc.
So much to do, but getting there.
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