Wood for medicine cabinet

[Gary Viggers]

I'm about to build a medicine cabinet for one of my bathrooms. I'm modeling it on an existing one in the house. It is going to be painted. Which is a better wood for this project: clear vertical grain douglas fir or poplar? The existing medicine cabinet was probably built on-site by the builders out of douglas fir. I'm trying to keep the house as historically accurate as possible, but it is going to be painted after all. How would the poplar hold up in this situation?

Thanks,

Gary

[Jim Becker]

I build a lot of things out of poplar off my property. (Tulip Poplar/Yellow Poplar, not one of the aspin "true poplar" varieties) This is a very common furniture wood and I see no issue with you using it for your project. Douglas fir is very nice to work with, too, although I really like the look of it "naked", especially when it's straight grained.

[scott vroom]

Popular would work. If you wanted a harder wood for paint grade you could use soft maple or eastern hard maple. A medicine cabinet doesn't get a lot of abuse so poplar would be an OK choice.

[Jim Rimmer]

+1 for Poplar

[Russell Sansom]

I put 5 across the wall of my bathroom and they're in poplar. I can't think of a better candidate.

[Cheryl Lewis]

I'm about to build a medicine cabinet for one of my bathrooms. I'm modeling it on an existing one in the house. It is going to be painted. Which is a better wood for this project: clear vertical grain douglas fir or poplar? The existing medicine cabinet was probably built on-site by the builders out of douglas fir. I'm trying to keep the house as historically accurate as possible, but it is going to be painted after all. How would the poplar hold up in this situation?

Thanks,

Gary
Poplar or soft maple would be fine.

[Chris Padilla]

Any closed-grain, tight-grain wood tends to paint up very nicely and poplar and birch are at the top of the list. Sure, you can do maple, but who wants to paint maple?! ;) haha (This coming from a guy who just painted a small walnut shelf black!)

Being a cabinet in a relatively high-humidity area, I would go with a nice maple or birch plywood and edgeband it with poplar.

[Jerry Olexa]

Poplar is fine if you're painting....

[Peter Quinn]

Poplar is fine in a bathroom for paint grade, fir works well too but if I had vertical grain DF I'd want to save that for something clear grade personally. In my area good fir is nearly three times the cost of poplar, and poplar is easier to shape. I did my own bath room cabinets in soft maple for paint grade. I used wide boards and pulled off the QS material on the edges for rails, stiles and FF, and used the rest of the boards for something else. I find the soft maple a bit more durable and stable than poplar for doors, particularly inset doors.

[David Weaver]

I would choose poplar, also, but soft maple over poplar. Wood grain telegraphing through paint looks tacky or out of date to me, no DF - save that for shop shelving.

When I did my medicine cabinet, I used borg second growth poplar for the carcass and i didn't like it that much for the face frame and door, so I used cherry for that, even though it got painted white (it's mostly mirror, anyway).

[Gary Viggers]

Thanks for all the advice. Just about everyone suggested poplar and I've got plenty of it, so I guess poplar it is.

Now for the design question:

The medicine cabinet I'm duplicating has nailed butt joints for the carcass and shelves. The shelves are flush with the carcass front and the face frame is mitered with a 1/4" reveal. The doors are simple shaker style rails and stiles with a mirror. Here's a picture without the doors:

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Should I just use butt joints with screws for the carcass/shelves or should I go the extra distance and use stopped dados for the shelves? This is not fine furniture and it's not going to be supporting much weight. What would you do?

[Chris Padilla]

Gary,

It all depends on YOU, really. If this needs done relatively quickly, then do it the fastest way you can. If you have some time to spend on it, then further your skills by giving it some extra attention. Frankly, since this is a small unit, you could just butt, glue 'n screw, slap some paint on it and call it done.

Do you want adjustable shelves? You do have some fancy-ish details on this so you may want to explore assembling it a bit nicer.

I would over-engineer it (because I enjoy doing that) and cut in dadoes or maybe explore sliding dovetail joints or maybe think about adding holes for adjustable shelves.

[Gary Viggers]

Gary,

It all depends on YOU, really. If this needs done relatively quickly, then do it the fastest way you can. If you have some time to spend on it, then further your skills by giving it some extra attention. Frankly, since this is a small unit, you could just butt, glue 'n screw, slap some paint on it and call it done.

Do you want adjustable shelves? You do have some fancy-ish details on this so you may want to explore assembling it a bit nicer.

I would over-engineer it (because I enjoy doing that) and cut in dadoes or maybe explore sliding dovetail joints or maybe think about adding holes for adjustable shelves.

I don't want holes/adjustable shelves because I'm trying to keep it as "1920/30s" as possible. I want to do it quickly ("butt, glue 'n screw, slap some paint on it and call it done"), but I like your idea of sliding dovetails just because I've never done those and I'm always looking to try new techniques. I would have to do them stopped because I want that butt joint look - which is why I should probably just do butt joints :)