I'm strongly considering making my own kitchen cabinets.
Does anyone have an online or a good book reference that supplies the drawings and joinery details? I'd like to make raised panel doors.
This whole idea is a step up in challenge for me. My shop has the basic staples (table saw, radial arm, jointer, band saw, drill press, and hand tools) and I'll be either making or getting a decent router table for the job.
KIMOSABE wrote in news:b5ec4c6b-c1c7-4080-8363- snipped-for-privacy@g38g2000yqd.googlegroups.com:
Some commercial cabinetmakers have sketchup plans. That may help. Then go to Home Depot or something like it and take a camera.
Take a look at the NYW package.
Lot of info for less than $100.
Lew
If you want to build face frame cabinets you might try your local library. I did that and ended up buying "How to Build Cabinets for the Modern Kitchen" (although it's probably out of print by now).
If you're interested in building euro-style cabinets, send for Lee Valley's free instruction booklet that tells how to use their jig. Whether you use their jig or not, it amounts to a complete how-to for that type cabinet.
The "Complete Kitchen Cabinetmaker", by Bob Lang is my personal favorite.
He does a nice job explaining face frame, frameless, and hybrid styles, and how not to make your cabinets like an amateur. I enjoy his writing style, so I may be biased.
I forgot...
Enjoy the reviews...
A cupboard is a simple box.
I did this many years ago. Turned out great, but took way longer than I care to admit as it was a busy time in life and I had only a few hours in the evenings during the week and some time on weekends. Counting demo, replumbing, rewiring, moving walls, new rock, etc, etc, it went on for years. Fortunately, SWMBO was/is very patient.
There are several reasonable books along the lines of "building your own kitchen cabinets". Check them out on Amazon and pick one that is most like the style and type of construction you plan to use.
Designing the layout is probably more important than particular cabinet construction or style. Fortunately, there is plenty of good kitchen design advice out there. One thing I did that worked really well was to have very few traditional base cabinets. Mostly I put drawers everywhere, with many big, deep, wide drawers with heavy duty full extension slides. They were wonderful for storing pots, pans, and even small appliances. Doing it over today I wouldn't have a single base cabinet without drawers or at least rollouts.
I would say the toughest part for me was finishing a roomful of cabinets without spray equipment. I used oil based poly for the toughness, and finishing was the most grueling part of the whole job. I had to do it in the garage in all kinds of weather and it stopped being fun on the first cabinet.
I guess the saddest part was selling the house and moving a year or two after finishing the kitchen. Good news was the kitchen sold the house.
Good luck!
Paul F.
"KIMOSABE" wrote
Good! Properly planned and executed, it is a doable, rewarding and profitable exercise.
While you are gathering information, my first suggestion would be to download a free version of Google SketchUp, familiarize yourself with the program for a few hours, and in "plan" view, layout your kitchen wall area with the actual dimensions.
When you have good floor plan, complete with windows and other architectural elements, then visit the SU "3d warehouse".
In the "3d warehouse" search box type in the phrase "dc cabinets" ... that will take you to a 3d collection of basic kitchen wall and base cabinets that you can download individually to your kitchen floor plan.
These particular models are "dynamic components", and as such they can be re-sized in the industry standard 3" increments, which will allow you to populate your kitchen easily without having a lot of gaps requiring spacers.
Note: they do not have to be in the final "style" you want, but the ability to just use a representation of the actual cabinet sizes will allow you, using SU, to walk through the kitchen in 3d and give you an excellent idea of what your plan is going to look like in the real world.
As in the first sentence above, "planning" for the space itself is the first, most important step, in designing/building a kitchen and is a step which can be worked on now and refined as you go along when deciding what type of cabinets you want and the method you will use to build them.
There are a plethora of kitchen cabinet "methods" and proponents of each, so you will get lots of input.
On that note, you may want to rely for your best advice on those who have firsthand experience and can actually show you examples of what they have accomplished.
I have built a number of kitchen in new homes and am working on the design stage of one as we speak. If you will provide a real e-mail address, can receive files of +/- 2mb, and have Google SketchUp, version 7, installed, let me know and I can e-mail you an SU file of a current kitchen project in progress, one which will be used to build the actual kitchen, so that you can get an idea of what this tool can do for the "planning stage" of your project.
Good luck, and let us know if you have any questions ...
I built a kitchen from scratch in the lower level of my last home, an
1860s era townhouse in Baltimore. The first floor kitchen was about 6x9, but it gave me the luxury of taking my time on the new kitchen. I told SWHBO that this would be a four month project. I was only off by about 10 months.I did face frame construction (first time for me). My principal tool was a Shopsmith. My best tool was a Kreg pocket hole maker. I used pocket hole joinery for the face frames, doors and drawers. I was planning on mortise and tenon for the doors and dovetails for the drawers, but had I done so I still would have been working on this project. The doors were simple craftsman style floating panels.
I picked up a book on basic cabinet construction at WW Warehouse and that was helpful.
I built a center island with large pull out shelves. Counter tops were tiled with 4 inch quarry tiles.
All in all, this was a great learning experience for me. The guys on this newsgroup were very helpful (thanks, again). We sold the house about a year later and that kitchen helped me get my asking price.
Good luck!
Some thoughts on space utilization in a kitchen.
Cupboards under a counter top create a lot of less than easy access space.
Consider either of the following:
1) Drawers /w/ individual fronts. 2) Cupboard door front to cover a group of roll out drawers. 3) If you are going to have a pantry, consider using wire basket technology for storing vegetables (Keep potatoes and onions separate).YMMV
Lew
The cure for that is to use prefinished maple ply for the boxes. The finished side goes IN.
The only finishing will be face frames (if required by the style), the occasional shelf edge, and doors.
Ditto that. I build base cabinets a couple of years ago and looking back, if prefinished ply would have cost double it would have been worth it.
todd
Sounds like my experiences, took way longer then expected. That was my intro to woodworking, demo and rebuild a kitchen. We were up to 9500 bucks on prebuilt (PB) cabinets, plus knobs and pulls, and still saw too much MDF in everything. Bought 2 books and got to work. Almost bottom-of-the-line tools (replaced) were bought, 20 mo. later wife was VERY pleased. Gotta keep mama happy. Still saved money, (tools, appl. cabinets cost less then PB cabinets) Hell, the pulls, knobs and hinges were over a grand. We have better then any PB I've seen. Rain glass in the doors. Not available in PB cabinets. Go for it. Yes, if I did it again, I'd do thing a little different, but over all, it worked out great.
I have a few comments...
On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:01:43 +0000, Morris Dovey wrote (in article ):
I had a brief pootle round the site and could not find This Thing Of Which Thou Spake.
Have you got a page ref, pliz?
Sorry for being lame..
Try here (still no charge for the booklet)
Got it. Thanks!!
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