New house, new shop, cabinet material questions

[Bob Elliott]

I have been away from the board and woodworking for a long time. We sold our home in Santa Cruz a year ago so I had no shop or equipment for 12 months. We were in a very mall apartment for the past year. After a long wait moved to 2 acres in Felton, CA. This house was beat and neglected for many years. My challenge is to clean it up.

Last weekend we moved all our stuff out of storage and into the house and garage. We are living in chaos and work from dusk until dawn. I almost feel guilty leaving my wife to go to work in the morning. My shop will be the 2 car garage that is a mess now. It is like no other garage I have seen around here. I have an I-beam ridge and vaulted ceilings. It will make it a challenge to hang lights - I will need chains. Before we moved I coated the floor in grey epoxy.

The floor in the kitchen is spongy and I discovered that the discharge hose from eth dishwasher has disintegrated. The people who lived here before put bats of cotton cloth against the toe kick to keep the water from coming out into the room. The subfloor and joists are rotten and I am sure there is damage to the outside wall. My plan is to build kitchen cabinets this winter and tear out the existing kitchen next spring.

My wife wants cabinets that are painted white. She isn't interested in poly over wood. I would like to know what wood materials would work best for this application. I would think pine wouldn't handle dents well. Should I use an inexpensive hardwood? Any suggestions are appreciated.

Bob

[Cary Falk]

I would use soft or hard maple depending on how dent resistant you want it. Popular takes paint well but is not that hard.

[Jamie Buxton]

White kitchen cabinets on a tight budget? Check out Ikea. You can get complete cabinets for less money than it would take to buy the materials to make your own. White melamine is right up their alley. It may not be high-end woodworking, but it sounds like you have lots of other issues your budget and time need to cover.

[Roy Harding]

Jamie is dead on. In our last house, I re-did the kitchen. I discovered that I could buy cabinet carcasses from Home Depot cheaper than I could buy the raw materials to make my own. So that's what I did - and when an odd size was needed, I just ordered an oversized carcass and cut it down to size. THEN, I made my own maple doors, drawer fronts, and face frames, and applied thin sheets of maple (a bit thicker than what I'd call veneer) on the exposed exterior surfaces, and voila - a maple kitchen.

When I (finally - one day) get around to the kitchen in our CURRENT house, I'll do the same thing. A bonus is that the melamine interiors are very easy to keep clean - a thought which hadn't occurred to me prior to doing that kitchen. Aside from the economic advantages, doing it this way takes WAY less time.

[Bob Elliott]

White kitchen cabinets on a tight budget? Check out Ikea. You can get complete cabinets for less money than it would take to buy the materials to make your own. White melamine is right up their alley. It may not be high-end woodworking, but it sounds like you have lots of other issues your budget and time need to cover.


I want to build the cabinets once and not worry about it for a long time. I agree that I coudl get cabinets at Ikea or HD cheaper and faster but then I have a kitchen of "Depot Cheapos" that will have sagging shelves and screwed up doors that I will wind up replacing.

My plan is to make cabinets that I won't worry about for a long time. I like solid wood fronts with 3/4" plywood carcasses. The big box cabinets I have seen use particle board which seems to eventually flex or fail with water exposure. I don't want to deal with it.

Once it starts raining in the late fall I am stuck indoors until spring. That would be my opportunity to get some much needed shop time to build the cabinets. I am looking forward to it.

Maple was my first choice but I wanted to go with clear poly. The Boss wants white paint. It pains me to spend the money maple costs to cover up beautiful wood with paint. If there is another choice I would like to hear it. If not I'll shell out the cash for the good stuff and paint it.

Bob

[mreza Salav]

There is nothing wrong with particle core melamine boxes. In fact they are BETTER in many aspects over plywood (they stay flat, thickness is consistent, the skin is more durable, cheaper to buy, etc). If boxes are exposed to water it doesn't matter whether it is plywood or particle core, both will be damaged. I will soon be building my own cabinets and I have walked away from plywood carcase (even prefinished one).

[Bob Elliott]

This could turn into a "Ford vs Chevy" type thread.

I don't like particle core carcasses. I prefer plywood for a few reasons.

[Garrett Ellis]

This could turn into a "Ford vs Chevy" type thread.

Did not realize this was still a relevant argument, LOL.


...and when an odd size was needed, I just ordered an oversized carcass and cut it down to size.

Roy, can you expand on this? Did you just unscrew(?) the components, cut to size, and reassemble?

[Bob Elliott]

Did not realize this was still a relevant argument, LOL.



Roy, can you expand on this? Did you just unscrew(?) the components, cut to size, and reassemble?

ok Honda vs Toyota

[Steve Mcmahon]

Bob

I'm on your side - I like pre finished 3/4 ply and would go with maple. Since they will be painted the maple does not need to be 1st quality white, it could have streaks and brown

[Michael Wildt]

Sounds like you have your todo list completely full including structural issues. Good luck for sure.

That said, Ikea does use blum hardware for both hinges and drawers. If you need a quick kitchen, to keep wife happy then Ikea is the way to go. The benefit is that Ikea's cabinets are not assembled so its easy to modify them opposite complete boxes. with 25 years warranty for the $$ you cant go wrong. At least it an be used while you build the dream cabinets. Then take the Ikea ones down and use them in the shop.

I do like the pro's you're listing and would love to do that my self one day, but if functionality and time is critical then I'd hold off.

[Bob Cooper]

I just went to an Ikea this weekend and only have limited exposure. I bought a 30x60 study table for my son. It was extremely well built. Also i noticed that their cabinets all used nice Blum drawer glides.

Im not sure I'd equate the super cheap sagging bookshelves u can buy from Walmart to what Ikea produces but maybe someone that's bought a bunch of Ikea cabinets could comment.

I recently built my entire kitchen and I had a lot of time and room. It was a lot of work. it sounds like the new house will leave u with a lot to do besides the cabinets where you'll have to do custom work --ie fix stuff.

If youre really set on this you may want to build one cabinet first and compare the time, money and quality to something mass produced.

[Roy Harding]

...
Roy, can you expand on this? Did you just unscrew(?) the components, cut to size, and reassemble?

Exactly (although these are flat packed, so you do the cutting, pilot hole drilling, etcetera, before assembling).

I won't get too far into the "Ford vs Chevy" argument, but will note that I never had any of the problems Bob Elliot mentions. As far as doors go, I built my own (and my own face frames, etcetera). I understand Bob's feelings regarding the HD/Lowes/Ikea cheapo's - and I never argue with a man's sense of aesthetics. I felt the same way (having worked in a cabinet shop which mass produced melamine cabinets) until economic necessity drove me to it. Having done it once under protest, I will now do it again quite willingly.

[Bob Elliott]

The plan is to build cabinets this winter and tear into the kitchen next spring. We have a functioning kitchen now that we can work with.

I am not in a terrible hurry and neither is my wife. Another thing I didn't mention is I enjoy building cabinets and looks forward to this project. I haven't looked at Ikea cabinets in a long time and even if the quality has gone up I think I can build a better product. I tend to use 1/2" 7 ply Baltic birch to make dovetailed drawers and I customize the cabinets to fit the kitchen. I can also put extras in that will make my wife happy.

I built custom built-in cabinets in our last house that she loved. The house was 1/2 the size of this one but we had double the storage.

In the area of the country where we live It will start raining in late October or usually November and will continue to April or May. After that it won't rain until the next fall. I am "racing" the rain doing outdoor projects. My plan is to start on the cabinets when the rains come and work on them all winter.

[Jeff Duncan]

My thought is that you havne't really looked too closely at factory cabinets. My MIL has basic Schrock factory cabinets put in about 25 years ago. I did have to tighten up the hinge on one of the base cabinets last year....but that's the extent of repair needed. This is a woman who loves to entertain and routinely cooks meals for 50+ people, so the kitchen has not been babied in any way. The fact of the matter is decent factory kitchens last decades. The melamine cabinets in my mothers house are about 40 years old and only now starting to have some minor issues with drawers. Sometimes people get these confused with the cheapy kitchens which are bought b/c they're the cheapest possible solution:o

I build kitchens for a living so I'm not a huge fan of factory kitchens, but I also am not going to distort the truth by saying they're not decent quality for the price. I'm also not trying to sway your opinion one way or other, but just want to throw out some things for you to think about before jumping head first into the deep end of the pool. Kitchens cost money, a lot of money. In reality if you build a decent kitchen it will very very likely cost you more than a factory kitchen. They also take a lot of time and there's a lot of planning that needs to go into making sure everything works with everything else. You also have a floor that needs attention and likely will be due for an electrical upgrade, so really spend some time planning this out before committing time and money;)

OK so now onto fabrication, many different ways to skin a cat and none of them is necessarily any better than the other. I like plywood for carcasses in kitchens and baths for the simple reason that it's more resistant to moisture issues than mdf or pb. If your doing flat paint grade panel doors mdf is what's called for, no real alternative there unless you want to try solid slabs and deal with the movement and warping! If frame and panel doors I use soft maple and mdf panels. I try to oversize the doors a bit so I can use 3/8" mdf, it makes the door feel a bit more solid. I would advise buying drawer boxes as they're incredibly time consuming and they're cheaper to buy than to build in house. Buy good hardware, it's got to last so you don't want to skimp there. I moved to all Blum hinges and drawer slides several years ago, though there's other good quality manufacturers as well. I also use ladder frames for kitchens as it's easier to install and gives you better yield per sheet of ply. Lastly for now is paint....I'd say the overwhelming majority of my work is paint grade. Anything that's going to get use is soft maple, moldings and trim are poplar. If you can set up to spray I recommend a good post catalyzed lacquer as they're fairly easy to spray, pretty hard wearing, and have a nice feel to the finish. If not I recommend having a local finisher spray them for you. Again, kitchens are hard wear areas, you want something that's going to last a couple decades;)

Anyway that's all I have for now, good luck with your project!
JeffD

Oops, almost forgot.......FORD:D