Inset doors & drawers for first-time cabinet builder?

I'm looking into building new cabinets for my kitchen, partially because it has almost none and partially because I've been wanting to get back into woodworking (and I like jumping in at the deep end). The design I have is basically 5 straight and 1 corner base cabinets, and 3 straight and 1 corner upper cabinets.

I'd really like to do full-inset doors and drawers, but I'm ondering if that might fall into the more-than-I-can-chew category. I haven't done serious woodworking since high school, but in the meantime I've built a few things that came out well with a circular saw and hand tools, most recently a largish CD rack.

If it wasn't for the existence of 3-way adjustable hinges and drawer-front adjusters I wouldn't even consider it. Most of what I'm concerned about is the doors and drawers sticking in humid weather. (I live in New England, so the seasonal variation in humidity is significant, and I'll probably be finishing the job in the winter.) Should I think about making frame-and-panel drawer fronts as well as doors, at least for the larger drawers (largest one will probably be 7" high)? Or am I just setting myself up for untold pain and misery?

Reply to
Chip Olson
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Build a practice set of parts out of MDF. Remake the parts until you get it right. Use the MDF parts as patterns for the real thing.

MDF is cheap, comes "prepared", as it needs no jointing or planing, and machines well.

Barry

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B a r r y

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