Inset Doors For a Built-In Cabinet

[John Baum]

I am faced with some choices for constructing inset doors for a built-in sewing closet - storage cabinet in my 1950's post-and-beam house. The existing face of the ‘feature wall’ defines the outer face of the doors. The builder used 5/8” plywood grooved 2” on centers with 3/8” wide x 1/4" deep grooves. I have a sufficient stock of material salvaged from a remodel to complete the project. It is remarkable stuff with almost no voids. Apparently he could specify 16”, 32”, and 48” widths; most of what I have are the narrower two.

The opening I need to close is ~84” x 48.” It will be broken into 3 sets of two 24” doors each, 32”, 29.5”, and 23” tall, so no one door should be more than ~30-35 pounds according to my estimates. Here are my challenges:

What is the best choice for backing the facing plywood, 3/4"fir plywood, 3/4"birch plywood or MDF? I plan on gluing and screwing the panels together from the backer side into the battens of the face board. Does anyone see a better alternative? The facing plies have a tendency to warp towards the back face leaving a cup to back of ~ 1/8” in 16” so they need to be backed to be flat. I also need something more substantial to hold hinges. Most of the materials of construction thus far are all ‘repurposed’ ones, salvaged from earlier cupboards and an executive office that was remodeled at work.

What is my best choice for hinges? My customer (my wife) would be delighted if this project can be accomplished using an ‘invisible’ hinge like the Soss or a Eurohinge, but I’ve not found one that looks like it will work. I have sent an inquiry to hardwaresource.com. I looked at the Soss catalog. For a 1-3/8” thick door, the recommended hinge is the 216 which needs to be set ¼” in from the outer face of the door. This runs into the 1/4"” deep groove in my door face material on the casing side for certain. See photo. I am about ready to give in and use continuous hinge or a face-mounted pivot hinge. We considered full-length bifold doors, but concluded that they would be too heavy; We also like the flexibility of keeping the midsection open more often while keeping the upper and lower storage cabinets closed most of the time.

Current specifications call for the doors to open to substantially more than 90° to keep the 5’ wide entryway side of the project passable when any of them is open. Note that each side of the opening is framed symmetrically for our purposes with a 4x4 post supporting a 4x14 beam hidden in the upper wall. Each opening is then faced with 1/4" lauan plywood paneling, edge trimmed with a 1/4"x1/4" strip of redwood. This was the original entryway into the bedroom wing, so there is a 2x4 frame ‘header box’ to lower the top and bring the opening into proportion.

I have attached 3 images from Imageshack, a photo of the project area, a detail of the left hinge edge, and an Autosketch9 planview sketch of the left hinge area. Please let me know if more images would help.

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/6081/sewingcloset081811.th.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/88/sewingcloset081811.jpg/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/2467/sewingclosetdetail08181.th.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/155/sewingclosetdetail08181.jpg/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/2004/sewingclosetdoordetail3.th.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/109/sewingclosetdoordetail3.jpg/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

Thanks,

baumgrenze

[Jamie Buxton]

Doors that thick in a cabinet give you troubles with the hinges, and feel massive when you open them. I'd kerf the 5/8" ply on the back side to make it easier to flatten out. Then I'd glue it to 1/4" ply, using a really flat surface as the platen while the glue dries. The result will be kinda like a torsion box -- a rigid flat object constructed from somewhat floppy materials. The door would likely be less than 7/8" thick. Then you could use standard euro hinges for the inset doors.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Or - another thought - rather than a full-surface backing, would some hardwood battens work? They could be used for hinge attachment points as well.