Finally Finished my Kitchen Cabinets..

[John Viercinski]

Ok,

So it's been a while since I've posted, but I finished my kitchen cabinet project last year and I thought I'd post the before and afters...
The cabinet boxes are prefinished maple ply, the face frames and door rails and stiles are poplar with mdf panels. They were sprayed with an HVLP gun using BIN primer and then finished with a couple coats of Satin Impervo.

I went with the inset doors, because, well, they look a little more custom IMHO and white since it's a small kitchen.

[Kevin L. Pauba]

Just beautiful, John. Can you share your construction techniques?

[Dave Mura]

They look great, John!

[John Viercinski]

Coincidentally, I was gearing up for this project when Norm was starting to air his 9 episodes on kitchen cabinets in 2008. So, I used most of his construction techniques. I used Cabinet Planner to develop the layout and cut sheets, which worked quite well. Any specific techniques you were interested in?

[Ryan Lee]

Did you use the latex or the oil Satin Impervo?

[John Viercinski]

I used the latex. I went on smooth and was easy to work with. It left minor brush marks but had very good leveling properties overall. I would definitely use it again. I can't properly compare it to the oil based impervo since I never used it, but the clean up of oil based paints has always been a deterent for me. According to the BenjMo salesperson, the oil will level even better than the water based stuff, but I'm planning on sticking to the latex.

[Mike Henderson]

Wow, that's quite a project. Was that an addition on the house, or a re-do of an existing kitchen?

Great job.

Mike

[John Viercinski]

It was a redo... a major redo. That picture from the gutting was taken in June of 2007. I officially finished it in August of 2008.

[frank shic]

great job! did you do the granite yourself as well? love the backsplash btw.

[John Viercinski]

The granite was purchased locally... was going to do concrete, but ran out of time... I'm happy with the granite though.

[Chris Tsutsui]

Well done, looks contemporary and clean and makes me want to order a martini and cook a gourmet meal in there. :)

What I like especially:

Cabinet lighting in glass cabinet, plus inset flush doors require extra attention to craftsmanship. I also like your choices of trim & fixtures. It's not over the top modern, but it's done enough that it can attract a wide variety of buyers that definitely adds equity to your home.

What you can as optional is make a custom cabinet for the trash can that matches the rest of the kitchen. I made one that the trash can pulls out. This provides additional counter space on top of the trash can, though you do have decent counterspace with that bar seating area.

[John Viercinski]

Chris,
Thanks for the compliments.

A pull out trash can is a great idea, unfortunately, I think I'd have to replace a section of granite to get it in there. I'm probably going to add a few book shelves next to the cabinet above the sink..

[Steve Clardy]

Very nice John ;)

[Nathan Callender]

That's a sweet kitchen! Congrats. I'm in the same boat - I've got half of my kitchen close to being done. Hopefully tonight I'll be sanding the last of it and hopefully moving on to finishing! I hope mine turns out as well as yours!

[Peter Aeschliman]

Love the style. The exposed/mortised hinges, flush cabinet doors, and the colors of your kitchen. Looks like a very usable space for its size.

Did you use any Floetrol with the latex? I actually just finished spraying all of my cabinet doors to give my kitchen a fresh look. I used the same latex as we used on our baseboards and crown molding... I mixed a ton of floetrol into the latex paint to thin it for my HVLP gun, but it turned out great.

The instructions provide mixing guidelines for brushing as well. Apparently it will help hide your brush marks because it slows down the dry time... so it will even/level out more like oil-based paints.

Anyway, great job. I'm jealous, although a year + without a kitchen doesn't sound too fun.

[Jeremy Brant]

They look good, but why did you use prefinished maple ply and then paint them? Is the maple exposed inside the cabinets? It seems like an added expense over any other unfinished quality ply that would be paint grade.

[John Viercinski]

good question,

the prefinished maple ply is exposed in the interior of the cabinets. The cabinets that have exposed sides that required paint have a sandwich of birch play over the maple. The cabinet above the bar is all birch as well.

[Jacob Griffith]

Excellent work John, thanks for posting.

[Kevin L. Pauba]

Norm's method is pretty clear to me (since I watched that series). I assume that would mean biscuits, brads and a slot routed in the carcasses to received the FF biscuits.

I will be doing our cabinets in the next year or two and I'm interested in all of the techniques. I think I'll be using Sommerfield's T&G technique and I love the look of your inset doors enough to give that a try.

Did you mill the wood yourself? Purchased from a Borg, specialty hardwood store or sawmill?

Thanks for sharing!

[John Viercinski]

Kevin,

I recommend the Tobin book on kitchen cabinet construction in addition to Norm's technique.

I would be hard pressed to repeat this effort if I didn't use the Cabinet Planner software as well. I believe I paid $100 for it and it was invaluable. It allowed be to forgo the layout sticks that most traditionalists use and also permitted me to make dimensional changes on the fly without having to recompute every other cabinet that was affected.

To attach the face frames to the boxes, I mostly used pocket holes on the outside of the boxes. This is perfect for cabinets that are sandwiched between other cabinets. For cabinets that had an exposed side, you're right, I used biscuitsm but no brads.

Another serious challenge was finding the space to cut, assemble and paint all those cabinets. Luckily, I had my entire house to do it since it was effectively my workshop.

The inset doors were a challenge. If I had to do it again, I would have put a piece of sturdy cardboard behind the face frame openings and traced the dimensions onto the cardboard. Then you'd have an outline for the door that you could use to judge the dimensions. Too often I had to take the doors to the jointer or cut a hair off at the table saw... that was a royal pain and I ended up overcutting a door or two and had to make new ones.