Question on Kitchen Cabinet Doors

In designing cabinets, is there a rule to follow regarding the sizes of doors that I should follow?

Reason for asking is, if for some reason I opt to buy the doors I would rather design the cabinets ahead of time to follow conventional sizing.

Reply to
OFWW
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What type of doors: inset or overlay?

Your door size is generally contingent upon three parameters:

Rough Opening (RO) Hinge type. Inset or Overlay

With different doors there may be other parameters, but let's take it from there.

Reply to
Swingman

That's putting the cart before the horse.

Design/build your cabinets, then size your doors to the "as-built" cabinets.

Reply to
Swingman

Sorry, got called away by a client and didn't have time to expound on your question.

Build your cabinets FIRST!

You can do it the other way around, but it is not for the timid, The client for this vanity (original had been destroyed by a plumbing disaster) insisted on keeping the old doors, drawer fronts, and drawers in this Jack & Jill bath.:

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Two basic kinds of doors (and drawer fronts) "inset" and "overlay".

~ Inset doors/fronts generally have a +/- 3/32" reveal on all sides, so you obviously will make your doors approximately roughly 3/16" smaller, in both width and height, than the RO.

CAVEAT: it is best to "sneak up" on the "fit" of inset doors, and not rely on measurement too heavily, as most RO's are not perfectly square. Fitting inset doors is a skill, with a few tricks that can be used to sneak up on a perfect fit.

~ Overlay doors/fronts overlay your frameless cabinet's top and side panel edges. And overlay the face of the face frames of a traditional cabinet by a desired, usually aesthetic, amount.

This amount is also often dictated by the type of hinge you use.

To wit: the great majority of concealed hinged (Euro hinges) are 1/2" overlay ... so you would measure the RO, and then add 1" both the height and width to make the finished door. With 3/4" overlay, you would add 1

1/2", etc.

TIP: the *width* of overlay doors is generally more important in face frame cabinets. You can often fudge the height slightly to meet aesthetic requirements if need be.

TIP: an excellent way to quickly and accurately measure the actual door size for each cabinet is to "bury" the sum of the overlay on the tape measure you use when measuring the RO.

IOW, with a 1/2" overlay, measure your RO from the 1" mark on the tape measure instead of the dummy end. The measurement you read is then the actual door measurement, no math involved.

That's really it in a nutshell.

Be aware that, should you decide to purchase doors, most door shops will not do the math for you. IOW, you will give them the actual door measurement (height and width) that you want ... they don't want the liability of a bad fit.

Reply to
Swingman

FWIW I typically will slightly back bevel, on the TS, the stile outer edge opposite the hinge stile. This makes it easy to use a small hand plane on that sharp edge to tweak the fit of the mounted door to match the hinge side gap.

I have problems doing it that way, personally. I can't ever keep the 1" mark at the edge of the RO as easily as jamming the end of the tape measure against the opening. The tape always creeps one direction or the other. ;~( And since I use 1/2" overlay 99.8% of the time I simply add an inch to all RO measurements.

Reply to
Leon

Thumb problem?

Reply to
Swingman

LOL Probably

Reply to
Leon

Whoa... cold, a little funny, but cold.

Robert

Reply to
nailshooter41

Doubt Leon took offense. He stated he "personally" had trouble with the method, and an injury to an opposing thumb would be a legitimate reason to have trouble with that method.

Never fear, as scorekeeper he will have ample opportunity for revenge. lol

Reply to
Swingman

Well I don't think my thumb actually is part of the problem, but that was funny. Some of us, me, just have difficulty holding a tape stationary at one end and running the other end out to the opposite side of the opening. Although, holding the tape properly to insure no slipping might require an extra longer more articulating digit. ;~) I no longer have a squeezing feature with that thumb. LOL

I have really not done any kind of measuring like that with more than

9.5 digits. I did not get into any volume building until after "the incident" in 1989.

I AM the score keeper.

Reply to
Leon

My original thoughts were and overlay w/inset, if that makes sense. But I don't know if that is do-able with a hidden hinge. The HH is what is preferable to my wife.

All the floor cabinets will have drawers, at least that is my intentions, the wall cabinets Normal adjustable shelving.

I spoke with my wife regarding the cabinet doors, cathedral style with raised panels, the issues involved, and your guy's recommended idea's as coming from professionals of renown experience, plus the YMMV comment and discussed my current limitations regarding that.

She said that since we won't be living here, hopefully not too long after the job is done, like a year or so, she could deal with it. But obviously she really likes to full out Cathedral style doors.

I am wondering about making a simple arched top rail with just a flat panel and either routing a 1/4" round over edge, or installing a 1/4" strip, rounded over, ala Norm Abrams style would be a simple reliable work around.

Reply to
OFWW

I probably was not clear, I was wondering if the RO should be a consideration when building the cabinets so as to fit some "standard size door" if there is such a thing. Just in case we were to order doors.

If not, or even if, regarding the doors. If I go ahead and build all the cabinets, then we should be able to use them immediately and then install the doors as made, or ordered ? My preference at this time is to build doors, based on my limitations and your guy's experienced recommendations to not get in over my head too far.

Very nice, and looking at the cabinet installed pretty tightly with the side walls and the FF's was cool. It must have been a chore to slide it in.

I had a problem in our main bathroom and the counter was built into a space like you had there. It all had to be ripped out in order to jackhammer the floor up to fix the water leak. Your Job looks so close in style it brought back the memories.

I ended up buying three cabinets to install, but my clearance was almost 3/4" at each end of the combined cabinets. I considered myself extremely lucky to see them fit that tight, so I used a filler spacer painted to match. And then molding. We had a granite slab which had a marble swirl in it for the counter top.

My garage was 6 foot deep with parts, copper piping and "stuff", couldn't get to any of my tools at that time. :)

All my cabinets will be ff.

To me this is the scariest of all, since I am at the mercy of the hinge designers. And there is a bunch out there with hidden hinge designs. Worst case and even then not too bad for me, not my wife is to use the hinges that mount on the surface of the FF which wrap around the stile, and get it either in silver or white. The ones on my existing cabinets have been working for 40 years with nary a problem.

I am keeping this for my notes and to read over a few more times to get the hinge setups in my minds eye.

Reply to
OFWW

There is no industry standard cabinet door size.

Safest is to build your cabinets, then size your doors to the actual, "as-built" cabinet.

Even though I use SU to build the cabinets, the door and drawer front sizes are checked against the actual cabinet itself before I do the doors, especially if ordering them ... you never know when Murphy is lurking.

Absolutely ... BTDT, back when I used to eat my own dogfood more than I have been lately. ;)

That job was a perfect example of putting explicit trust in your experience and, most importantly, all your tools.

That vanity went into a bathroom in Little Rock, AR. My shop is in Houston, TX.

First trip, I used a digital measuring device to accurately measure the entire job (there were two other bathrooms). I came back to Houston, made a precisely dimensioned 3D SU model of each room and all it's featured; and then came back to Houston and built everything needed ...

500 miles away from the job site.

Basically, SketchUp allowed me to bring back virtual spaces/rooms, with all dimensions and features precisely measure, back to Houston.

Absolutely no need for another site visit until demo and installation time.

That decision is entirely a matter of taste.

I will say that modern, self/soft close, hidden hinges are an attractive feature when selling a house. I don't see that changing anytime soon, plus it is, on the whole, much easier to build, and install, doors using modern concealed hinges than the older styles.

Choosing which hinge and style can be daunting at first, but lots of folks here can help you with that task. Once you get the idea and discover what works for you, it becomes second nature.

Just ask your questions here, plus almost every hinge manufacturer has a website loaded with information.

Reply to
Swingman

Very doable with mortise and tenon doors, or loose tenon joinery.

Might even be able to do the arched rail slot for the flat panel with slot cutter router bit.

Many ways to skin that cat.

Reply to
Swingman

OK, you're not going to be there that long. Don't guild the lily!

Seriously, consider this as an alternative. One of the full retail custom cabinet shops has sample doors that are great looking, and deceptively clev er in design. Best of all, with some study, not too difficult to build.

If I were looking for something that would look nice, be fairly rapid to bu ild, and easy on the tools needed, I would make the doors (I can hear the s hrieks of horror now...) with the rails and stiles being through mortise jo ints.

We used to make these with a table saw and a box bit for the router, and lo ts and lots of test cuts. There is so much glue area they WILL NOT fail. The added bonus to this is you cut the groove in the door that accepts the panel (not shown in this diagram) the same thickness as your panel, and you can fit the tenon to the size of plywood you get on any given run.

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A look at this in practice. You can see the tenon, imagine the attendant m ortise, and you can see the groove for the panel:

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These traditional panel doors look very nice when finished if all the joine ry is in order. A quick. small round over on the outside edges of the rail s/stiles keeps that crisp craftsman look.

A rounded top stile will mean a rounded panel, which means fitting, and a l ot of extra work. To help one of my old remodeling pals through this same problem, I came up with this idea. He made the flat panel doors with the t hrough mortise as described. We then worked on the correct size of an arch we liked, and committed it to some mdf and cut it out as a pattern. We la id 1/8" void free plywood (these cabs were to be painted) over the patterns and cut the arches out with a pattern bit in a router, leaving a little ex cess width for fitting. The arch was glued to the panel face with poly glu e, and the appearance was outstanding. It had a much more clean and refine d look than the arched rails, which to me always look out of sorts.

Later, he used the same technique on cabinets he built out of maple. Since they were to be stained, he used his bandsaw to rip some 4" X 3/16" pieces of maple, almost a veneer to do the same thing we did with pattern/router/p lywood. I saw these when they were finished, and since they sat a bit back from the rails and stiles they also had that refined look, especially sinc e he went easy on the arches. They stained out perfectly since it was all the same wood, and his client (for good reason) was thrilled.

Like Karl said, there are many ways to skin the cat these days. Options ab ound, and you can even buy bits that do a straight dado and matching tenon (guaranteed fit) all over the net.

I would pay attention to Karl and Leon's advice on sizing doors and picking hinges. Also, since this is uncharted territory, I would build a sample s o I could test my finished dimensions, decide on my building and assembly t echnique and to finalize my hardware.

Robert

Reply to
nailshooter41

Old timer's favorite ... and you can cut them solely on the table saw.

AKA "Bridle Joint", or a corner bridle joint.

I use my table saw Delta "tenon jig to cut the mortises (a homemade spline jig works equally as well); and the table saw to cut the tenons (same method as a stub tenon is cut).

Reply to
Swingman

A relative inexpensive alternative for flat panel doors is to use bead board panels. I have done this on several kitchen and bathroom redo's for my customers. It dresses the door up a bit but is easy. And you can still arch the rails if you want.

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Just a thought.

Reply to
Leon

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