Inset cabinet door question

[Mike Thomas]

I am building my first set of cabinets that will have inset doors. The question I have is do I have to build a stop for the door to rest against when colsed?

[joe milana]

No you don't have to, but I have seen cabinets where the bottom was left proud of the faceframe by a 1/2" to act as a stop and self closing euro style hinges were used. A magnetic catch is simple and widly used as well.

[Fred Hargis]

Depending on the hinge you use, if you don't have the magnetic catch (or some other kind) the door may swing back open on it's own. But I really like the idea of using the cabinets bottom as a stop. Even so, I just used the catches when I built mine.

[Mike Thomas]

Thanks for the info. I am using concealled european hinges so they will stay closed. My problem is when the door closes the hinge does not stop exactly at 90 degrees. It wants to come against a stop such as normally happens when you have an overlay door. Has anyone used the Blumotion for doors in this application? I like the idea of the soft close.

[Jamie Buxton]

Thanks for the info. I am using concealled european hinges so they will stay closed. My problem is when the door closes the hinge does not stop exactly at 90 degrees. It wants to come against a stop such as normally happens when you have an overlay door. Has anyone used the Blumotion for doors in this application? I like the idea of the soft close.

Yes, I've used self-closing cup hinges for inset doors. They're designed to close a little bit more than flush, to ensure they close firmly against a cabinet. That is, you should provide a door stop of some sort. With the self-closing version, the stop doesn't need to provide the latching function. It just needs to stop the door.

Even with Blumotion, the door makes a clunk if it closes against wood. I still use rubber bumpers.

[Jim Becker]

Depends on what kind of hinges you use. For the Blum Euro hinges I use, they "over close" slightly as Jamie speaks about, so I put in stops and felt or plastic pads. (And I just love Blumotion)

[Leo Graywacz]

For smaller doors such as cabinet doors you can use one free swing hing and one self close hinge. This will give a more gentle close. You have to use some sort of a stop with the Euro hinges.

As for the deck being raised above the FF, I don't like to do this. If the door is slightly warped/twisted there will be no way to fake out of it using the 3 way motion of the Euro hinge. If you can make a perfectly flat door, you can do this.

[Peter Quinn]

You have to use some sort of stop with ANY door to prevent over travel and damage the hinges and frame. Passage, entry, cabinet, inset or overlay. EVERY DOOR HAS A STOP OF SOME SORT. On an over lay door the entire face frame or carcass edge is the stop. An inset door must also have a stop, and I do not like to use a plastic magnetic catch as the primary stop for a door.

We typically glue a piece of solid wood edge banding 1 1/4"" X 3/4" to the bottom horizontal member in each cab, rabbited so that 1/4" covers the edge of the plywood, and run the bottom panel 1/4" proud of the bottom of the face frame to act as a continuous stop. This gives you enough material below the bottom panel to attach the frame as well. Fairly simple to do, looks good, works well. I don't actually know how this is handled with inset frame-less cabs.

I have used the blumotion for doors, it takes up a bit of space, sort of chunky to look at, but it works well and gives the doors a nice action. Ditto what Leo noted, not all doors need a blumotion clip for each hinge, and a few of the smaller ones I installed actually work better with just one.

[Karl Brogger]

Ditto what Leo noted, not all doors need a blumotion clip for each hinge, and a few of the smaller ones I installed actually work better with just one.

On any cabinet door, (inset or not), if its a real narrow door I'll use just one. I wouldn't bother with mixing the free swinging with a self closing hinge if you're planning on using the soft close attachments.


As a side note, if your margins are super tight, like a 1/16, and the cabinet doesn't have anywhere but the door opening for air to escape, it creates kind of a soft close action. The air acting as the cushion that slows the closing. Also, Blum hardware doesn't like going much less than a 1/8" gap. At least thats what I've found using the regular 120* half/full crank hinges.

For inset doors I usually just add a strip across the top of the opening with a bit rabbeted out to allow for a bumper. I've kicked around raising the bottom deck, but on a large scale like on a kitchen I haven't come up with an economical/easy way to do this.