Face Frame Material Question

[Gene E Miller]

Greetings & Salutations,

I am about to make some side cabinets that will sit on each side of my Murphy Bed.

In these cabinets I am going to make use of a couple of very old leaded glass doors that are only 16" wide.

My cabinets are going to be 24" wide and I am going to put 3 or 4 full width drawers in the lower part of the cabinet.

Since the doors are only 16" wide and the cabinet is 24" that means that I will be making some very wide stiles for the upper part of the cabinet to get the opening down to the size of the door.

My thoughts are to make the upper stiles out of the same mahogany plywood that I am making the cabinet out of and then use solid wood for the rails and lower stiles.

My question would be has anyone done this or can this be done without making the whole thing look like it is cobbled together?

Would it be better to just get some wide material and make solid stiles for the entire face frame?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Jamie Buxton]

The only drawback to using plywood for the stiles is that you have to edgeband the plywood. With solid, you avoid that.

You say you're using mahogany plywood. In my lumber dealers, that now means "african mahogany", whatever that really is. If you're doing a clear varnish on it, it doesn't match Honduras mahogany lumber as well as I want. It is respectable stuff by itself, but I'd want to try to find lumber in the same species, to get a better match. If you're doing a stain-based finish, the mismatch is much less apparent.

[Gene E Miller]

The only drawback to using plywood for the stiles is that you have to edgeband the plywood. With solid, you avoid that.

You say you're using mahogany plywood. In my lumber dealers, that now means "african mahogany", whatever that really is. If you're doing a clear varnish on it, it doesn't match Honduras mahogany lumber as well as I want. It is respectable stuff by itself, but I'd want to try to find lumber in the same species, to get a better match. If you're doing a stain-based finish, the mismatch is much less apparent.


Thanks,

I am staining before I apply the lacquer anyway so that is not much of a problem.

I am leaning toward using the plywood for the upper portion and solid wood for the lower that will have much narrower stiles due to having full width drawers.

[John Keeton]

Gene, I looked again at the set of doors to try to get the scale of them. Are they 16" wide, including the frames?

Sounds like you are referring to the stiles on the faceframe, not the door stiles?

Couple of thoughts. I would have a consistent face frame/stile width, and go with doors to match the width of the drawers.

Then, I would probably consider removing the leaded glass panels, and incorporating them into new doors with added flat panels to even out the mix.

Without knowing the exact dimensions, it is hard to say more, but I don't like the idea of wider stiles just to make the dimensions work. I think I would view the cabinets overall for balance, and make the leaded glass panels fit the design.

Just my thoughts!

[Todd Burch]

I've made a cabinet before with wide stiles. I don't really care for the utility of it. A wide center stile is real bad, since it really gets in the way of seeing what is in the cabinet, and also limits what can be put into the cabinet. Wide left and right stiles with no center stile is how I would design it, if I had to.

[Gene E Miller]

The door itself is 16" wide and I can only use one door on each cabinet since the cabinet is only 24" wide.

So the stiles on the cabinet faceframe are the ones that need to be wider. The doors themselves are very solid and I know with my luck if I tried to build new doors and remove the leaded glass from the old ones there is something bad waiting to happen. ;)

[jim carter]

dont use wider stiles. use the same size as the lower part. i would put the door on the side away from the bed and add some small shelves to the remaining area. you can do the same on both and utilize that dead space.

[Jason Hanko]

What if you were to "wrap" the existing doors in either a matching wood or maybe even something that contrasted nicely? Think breadboard ends added onto your existing door to build out the width. That way you could keep the face frame width the same....

[Gene E Miller]

What if you were to "wrap" the existing doors in either a matching wood or maybe even something that contrasted nicely? Think breadboard ends added onto your existing door to build out the width. That way you could keep the face frame width the same....


Jason,

I had not thought of that but I kind of like that idea. The doors are made of oak and I could just expand the size both width and height with some oak stiles and rails and that would also make my opening more accessible.

Thanks for the idea.

[Chris Padilla]

How about some Sketch-Up work, Gene?! If you don't know it, now is a good time to learn it...I guarantee you'll love it. :D

[Gene E Miller]

How about some Sketch-Up work, Gene?! If you don't know it, now is a good time to learn it...I guarantee you'll love it. :D

I have it and have done some playing around with it on several occasions.

I keep going back to the old school, T-square, triangle and rule. What I was taught in school and my engineering classes that I took back in the old days. I will eventually learn it just that I keep thinking I could be working in the shop when I am working on sketch up.

:eek::eek:

[Peter Quinn]

I would make this unit in two parts. 4" face frames will look very out of proportion regardless of how you make it fly, they will add visual weight that will detract from the intention to feature the beautiful old leaded glass.

I would start with a design that featured 24" wide bottoms, a sort of molding to separate from the top divided lite section, then build the upper unit stepped over and a bit back sized to accept the doors you are working with. I can understand you may want 24" lowers for drawers that provide storage, but no need to force this on the uppers. Sort of like an old hutch or high boy, but in miniature, and skewed to one side (one right and one left) to work on each side of the bed. Make sense?

If the units must have a flat side facing out and be all in one plane, you could build a sort of plywood partition to the outside of the 24" dimension with an 1 1/2" face frame, step back an inch or two, and fill the rest of the space with the face frame to accept the actual door. This would divide that 4" visual weight into more acceptable proportions, allow your door to fit its hole without any major modification, and perhaps even add interest visually with moldings around the reveal that will be created.

[John Keeton]

One more thought - what about insetting the old door in a recessed area that is painted black (or some other contrasting color. This is sketch is crude, but I am trying to get away from the office and don't have time for much else.
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