Cabinetry Pros?

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Considering either plywood or melamine for the boxes for drawers for our kitchen remodel.

Also considering Blum Blumotion soft close drawer slides.....

Opinions appreciated!

[Brad Seubert]

Defiantly not a pro but I just finished my kitchen cabinets and used melamine. I was a little unsure about the melamine but now that they are finished I am glad I choose it. The inside of the cabinet is nice and bright and it cleans up really easy. I used 3/4" for the bottom, sides, and back and am sure they will be tore out by some future owner long before they fall apart.

[Peter Quinn]

The shop I'm in did drawer boxes made of BHK, 1/2" melamine coated particle board of some sort, about a year before I started. They did this because it was speced that way. Drawers started to disintegrate just about as soon as they started to get used. Edges chip, deep pot drawers sag, tape peels off, and you may as well take the sink out of the kitchen. The call backs are never ending. My opinion....dont do it. And if you do make two of each drawer in every size so the are easy to replace later.

On the plywood, I feel thats a much better option. In my own kitchen I made all the drawers in a fast and dirty the baby is coming I have to fix this 1950's kitchen for under $500 right now remodel using 1/2" prefinished maple plywood and prefinished edge banding. They have held up very well, still look great, its been 8 years of daily abuse. My 6 year old seems to think the drawers are either a jungle gym or a ladder depending on the day. Water, dishwasher steam, wet silver ware, they just keep going. And they don't sag....or disintegrate. I've also made loads of them for clients using finger joints and baltic birch, these are bullet proof if you like the look, almost better than solid wood in many ways IMO. We did a pile of very large drawers using 3/4" oak plywood for a horse farm last year, those worked very well too and looked beautiful. All on blum undermounts, which are my personal favorite slides.

Melamine seems to work fine for the cabinet boxes in a 3/4" thickness, but heavy and hard to work with, I always wear gloves to avoid lacerations and a good mask, even with good dust collection that pesky white stuff seems to avoid the collector.

[Jim Dwight]

I have used melamine for cabinet boxes and it worked OK but I wouldn't make drawers out of it. In 3/4 thickness it would work but it isn't very strong and isn't very nice to work with. It doesn't hold fasteners well and can't be machined to have dovetails or other joints that work in solid wood. My favorite is 1/2 inch Baltic birch. I machine dovetails in it and the resulting drawers are strong and we think they look nice. It is so easy to do the dovetails once the router and jig are set up I usually do that backs that way too. You have to back-cut the bb to avoid splitting but otherwise it machines about like solid wood. The plywood is much easier to work with than glueing up solid wood to the right width for the drawers. I've had success with other half inch plywood but it was more difficult. If I could find something like maple with poplar inner plys I would use it. I would be more leery of softwood inner plys or unknown wood species. (Baltic birch is all birch, inner and outer plys - birch is harder than poplar but softer than maple)

[Bill White]

Plywood? Yep.
Blumotion? Another yep.
You'll be a happy camper.
Bill

[Judson Green]

I've only used ply for kitchen drawer bottoms as mentioned the particleboard could sag after a while. If the drawers aren't that big then perhaps its OK. Ash was my go to wood for the drawer sides.

Used a competitors version of the same type of slides, I think from Hettich, worked just fine.

[Sam Murdoch]

I like the look of drawer boxes built with 5/8" basswood sides and 1/2 prefin maple ply. Dovetails or not don't matter as the blum undermounts relieve all the stress on the drawer fronts. A simple connection with dominos or dowels or even finish screws is more than rugged enough to connect the 4 pieces of the main box together. Dovetails are great too and pretty but are (I believe) structurally overkill with quality undermount slides. I assume that you will build 5 piece boxes with a separate attached front.

I don't like normal veneer plywood for the sides because the edges can't really be softened without compromising the plywood. However Baltic birch boxes are a good choice and those edges can be softly rounded without issue. Melamine just doesn't stand up to use.

Having said that - my experience with seeing my cabinetry age with normal use is that all bottoms take a beating and though prefin maple is rugged as can be, I now recommend that my clients line their drawer boxes with drawer liners available from many sources. The kind that comes off rolls and lays flat without needing to be glued or nailed down. Change that stuff out every 3 to 5 years and your drawers will look good for a lifetime. Without, the plywood drawers will last but not look so great.

[John Vernier]

I worked for a while in a cut-rate shop where we made a lot of melamine drawers, and they had all the prevailing problems mentioned above. Besides which, they are a lot heavier than plywood and frankly, they just look cheap to my eye, since I've made some nice drawers myself. My experiences with birch or maple ply drawers is much more positive - as with a couple of the posters above, I would consider ply over solid wood for practicality and efficiency, especially if I'm aiming to please non-woodworkers. I would use drawer-lock joints rather than dovetails in ply, to save myself the grief of veneer blowout.

Blumotion slides are a nice luxury. They just give your drawers a more expensive feel (of course part of that expense is real). But then, having married into a family, none of whom can completely close a drawer to save their life, I tend to think of them as a practical necessity.

[George Bokros]

I would use pre finished (clear finish) maple ply for cabinet boxes. I made our vanity out of it and it is bright inside and looks awesome. I use either Baltic Birch or soft maple for drawers. I round over the top edges of the drawers and they look great, even the ones made from Baltic Birch look great, even the wife approves. Not a fan of particle board for cabinets or drawers.

As for Blum Blumotion used those for the drawers for the vanity and love them.

[Phil Thien]

I know a lot of shops around here that use melamine for everything (boxes, shelves, drawers, etc.).

I hired an outfit to refurbish a bath and they used a cabinet shop that used melamine to build the vanity. Installers started having difficulty with it before even getting it installed. The problems were with drawers that had screws (for slides) that moved so the drawer alignment shifted, and also a joint let go. I ended up telling them to return the thing, and went with a pedestal sink.

I've decided that when I try building my own cabinets, I'm either going to use prefinished plywood, or unfinished plywood that I'll finish myself before slicing them up.

OTOH, my daughter wants a new kitchen and an Ikea add in a magazine shows a 10x10 kitchen cabinets for something like $2500. Some ridiculously low price. With all drawers in the bottoms. That is pretty attractive, too. The Ikea stuff gets good reviews. I think they have vinyl covered particle board boxes, which is a step-up from melamine (the vinyl is thicker/tougher).

[Peter Kelly]

The shop I'm in did drawer boxes made of BHK, 1/2" melamine coated particle board of some sort, about a year before I started. They did this because it was speced that way. Drawers started to disintegrate just about as soon as they started to get used. Edges chip, deep pot drawers sag, tape peels off, and you may as well take the sink out of the kitchen. The call backs are never ending. My opinion....dont do it. And if you do make two of each drawer in every size so the are easy to replace later.? BHK PB drawer blanks are continuously wrapped vinyl so no edge tape. Made all of my shop cabinet drawers out of them and they're still going strong after 20 years. As long as you're using dowels and/or confirmats, they'll be fine. http://www.bhkofamerica.com/drawers-durawrap.htm#1

If you're making frameless boxes in a home shop, I'd advise against melamine-clad particleboard. Panels are very heavy, fragile and requires some very sophisticated equipment to get good results. Otherwise, MCP is fine for boxes.

[John Coloccia]

OTOH, my daughter wants a new kitchen and an Ikea add in a magazine shows a 10x10 kitchen cabinets for something like $2500. Some ridiculously low price. With all drawers in the bottoms. That is pretty attractive, too. The Ikea stuff gets good reviews. I think they have vinyl covered particle board boxes, which is a step-up from melamine (the vinyl is thicker/tougher).

What's really funny is I came in here to say that I'm not a pro, but I would buy my kitchen from Ikea before using melamine, and I'm not being a wise guy. Some Ikea stuff is garbage, but their better lines are actually quite decent.

edit:
I guess I should qualify by saying that based on my limited experience, the biggest turn off for me is that it seems unless your whole shop is setup to deal with melamine, cranking out parts that don't look like they've been dragged down the street is not trivial. It seems like one of those things where you just need to know what you're doing, and in the end negates the cost and lack of finish benefits for just one project. That's just my opinion.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Ken
Either /or.

I have a whole kitchen to make here in the next month. I'm still undecided about which to use.

One thing for sure though - and my friend George turned me on to it is - the Marc Somerfield T&G method.
Slicker than goose feathers...

My only real venture into a cabinet was frustrating from the standpoint of getting everything nice and square and even.
W/Marc's three piece T&G router bit setup, everything naturally goes together flush and square.

Check out the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klv0jzWD26w

Re: Ikea - - if you have one local then you're ok.
If you have to ship stuff from them to your house, then you're mostly out of luck. The shipping from Pittsburgh (the nearest Ikea store) to Akron Ohio nearly triples the cost.
I priced some Ikea back in 2009 and said "Forget it".

One thing for sure though - - a tour of one of their stores is an unforgettable experience!

[Robert Engel]

I used the system 32/euro/frameless cab system.

3/4 double sided melamine bottoms, 5/8 for top.
Full thickness backs.
Edged with adhesive backed matching wood to doors.

5/8 melamine for drawer sides and bottoms.
Edge with white melamine or wood.
Full extension shelf slideouts in bottom units.
120 degree Blum hinges.

Standard rail/style doors of lumber.

Refer to book by Danny Proulx.

[Dave Zellers]

No melamine please.

But 1/2" BB ply makes a very nice drawer. If you center a 1" radius on the top edges it really softens it and helps prevent edge splintering. Or just ease the edges with a 1/8" radius bit. Sand it well and you get a beautiful cleanable finish.

The Blum soft close slides are awesome. Full extension and the drawer just lifts right out if you need to remove it.

[jack duren]

I've been a commercial/residential cabinet maker since 1983. It doesn't really matter what we want, but what you want. I'm sure you have a preference as I or anybody else does. When I sold cabinets I tell them the grades as well as the prices and they decide.

Bottom line... What do you want.

Glad I only build furniture now. Too many options in cabinetry and too many opinions;):D.

[William A Johnston]

The shop I work at produces melamine cabs everyday. We are currently building our drawers out of melamine but are going to switch to the Blum Metabox. I like a melamine cabinet because that's what I sell to my commercial clients. I do not like a melamine drawer box. They are very hard to repair and you can't hide the brad nail holes. They are very clean looking and you can clean them up if they get dirty with some lacquer thinner. I do highly recommend the Blum motion glides. They are top notch. I like a Baltic Birch or Russion Birch drawer box with a 1/2" bottom. You can ease edges with a router as its pretty much void free then clear with your choice of finish. If you use a melamine box you will have to either take it to a shop with an edge bander or use the iron on tape. If you choose to iron on the tape it tends to get black streaks from the heat.

Good luck Ken your a pro and could always do a solid hard maple drawer box with hand cut dovetails. That would dwarf Baltic Birch or melamine.

Bill

[Martin Wasner]

Melamine isn't a good material for drawers in my opinion. Or anything that you want to last.

Just my opinion.

With modern glue, dovetails are unnecessary, but all I sell is solid birch, half blind dovetail drawers with a ¼" Baltic birch drawer bottom, using 563h slides. It's just the look people are after. I like it because it creates more work that I can charge for.

A plywood drawer rabbeted together is plenty strong. All depends on what look you want, and how much effort you want to put into it.

My own house, I'd do what I sell with the solid wood dovetails.

I've considered offering the metabox drawers, but I don't know much about them.

I've been a professional cabinet maker since 98', I've ran my own shop since 04'

[Jeff Duncan]

For professional shops melamine is a great material to work with. It's very inexpensive, it's flat, it wears very well, and there's no finishing involved. However shops that work with it usually have edgebanders which allow you to apply thicker pvc banding which holds up very well. They also usually have some sort of construction boring equipment allowing quick and easy use of confirmat screws. These I believe are the 2 critical areas that can make or break it for a shop handling melamine. For the average homeowner with basic tools I'd have to give plywood the nod as being easier to work with.

I don't think your asking about using melamine for the actual drawer boxes, but if you were don't. It's the first sign of cheap quality….at least IMHO. Blumotion on the other hand are standard slides in any decent kitchen these days. The cheap steel side mounts are reserved for shops providing the cheapest product they can.

good luck,
JeffD

[peter gagliardi]

I agree with Jeff, melamine is a sign of the cheapest grade of construction- especially drawers. Blum undermounts are the best. Yes, I would be considered a pro- been building cabs for about 25 years .
Have never, and will never use particleboard/melamine! But I've been called in to replace LOTS of them. :D

[John TenEyck]

Not a pro either, just an experienced hobbiest with a modest shop. I made my kitchen cabinets and drawers out of 3/4" Melamine - 20 years ago and it still looks good with no failures. The hardwood plywood door panels, on the other hand, have all kinds of puckered and cracked veneer and need to be replaced. So much for the superior durability of plywood.

Melamine is heavy, true, but it's no harder to handle in a shop set up for sheet goods than any other sheet good. I used biscuits and screws to put the frameless boxes together and iron on tape. No failures. I made the drawer boxes out of 5/8" Melamine, also using biscuits - just biscuits and glue. I used 5/8" bottoms in the monster drawers that hold 100 lbs of pots and pans or canned goods, 1/4" in the regular ones and glued them in to the sides with Roo Glue. They are mounted with the old style Blum side mounted slides, the ones that self close but not soft close. My wife cooks - hard. In 20 years not one of those drawers has broken, nor has a bottom sagged.

If I ever do another kitchen I'm buying IKEA boxes and drawers and making my own doors and drawer fronts. They are well made and use Blum BluMotion slides and hinges. More important, why go through the hassle of handling all those sheet goods when you can buy them for a really good price? I'll spend my time, this time, on what you see.

John

[George Bokros]

Ken
One thing for sure though - and my friend George turned me on to it is - the Marc Somerfield T&G method.
Slicker than goose feathers...



I use the Marc Sommerfeld T&G system and it rocks. I guess I have to say that because I turned Rich on to this system. I built a whole shop of cabinets using it, an apothecary cabinet for the wife and the bathroom vanity as well as two closet organizers using this system and it makes good strong cabinets. The video Rich posted a link to is a good explanation of how it works.

[Peter Quinn]

? BHK PB drawer blanks are continuously wrapped vinyl so no edge tape. Made all of my shop cabinet drawers out of them and they're still going strong after 20 years. As long as you're using dowels and/or confirmats, they'll be fine. http://www.bhkofamerica.com/drawers-durawrap.htm#1

If you're making frameless boxes in a home shop, I'd advise against melamine-clad particleboard. Panels are very heavy, fragile and requires some very sophisticated equipment to get good results. Otherwise, MCP is fine for boxes.

I know what it is...the tape goes on after the edges peel in a sad attempt to repair a drawer box in the field. The vinyl can be as tough as nails but when the substrate is cardboard I'd doesn't much matter. They bought the stuff in 8' strips in various widths, I was actually LOL at the idea, probably imo the lowest quality drawer you could make short of just using MDF. I'm glad your experience was positive. My experience says save that trick for the $2k kitchen to compete with ikea.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Dust your notes off George old buddy! We close on the house next week and I'll probably get started on the cabinets pretty soon! ;) !

[Robert Engel]

Melamine isn't a good material for drawers in my opinion. Or anything that you want to last.
Respectfully, I have to disagree.

Let me say up front I hate particle board just as much as the next guy, but when I considered materials for my kitchen economy was the #1 factor.
Also, thinking about it, I realized nobody is really going to care whether its made from Birch ply or DS melamine. What they see are the doors and drawer fronts and overall design. My wife actually likes the white cab boxes - no dark corners, easy to clean, crisp looking.

It just depends on your view. To me, kitchen cabs, shop cabs, etc. are utility projects, not furniture so I save my dovetails for the latter.
Maybe that's because I only do dt's by hand.

No doubt cabs there's a certain cache in cabs with dt drawers cache.
They definitely give an idea of higher quality cabs, but it doesn't mean anything works better.
I've seen people open drawers and say "oh dovetails" must be a good quality cabinet. Not always true.

I run a business, too (not ww'ing) so I understand you want to project quality.
Aside from workmanship, I understand your POV that real wood is a way to do that.

But it doesn't mean melamine won't last.
I built my kitchen using the system 32 frameless method 8 years old and it is very well used.
The pantry has 36" wide drawers made of 3/4 DS melamine on 100lb slides. No problems even loaded with over 50# of cans.

I don't think anyone will have an issue with melamine drawers if they are constructed correctly.

I think whats most important is the construction technique, not the material.

[Larry Edgerton]

There is no melamine allowed in my shop. Can't think of one thing about it I like. I just don't need work that badly. Ken, if you do this you will regret it every time you open a drawer.

Larry

[John TenEyck]

One man's opinion. I like the look of my nice clean white drawers every time I open them, as I have for 20 years. Some of these drawers are 36" long and 12" deep with over 100 lbs of cans in them. They are as solid today as when I built them. It all depends upon how they are built.

I looked at the price of prefinished plywood for a recent vanity project. My non pro price was something like $150+ per sheet. Melamine was about $35. Add that up for a kitchen where I needed something like 30 sheets and you are talking over $3K difference. That's a pretty steep premium for a product that looks different but is no more durable in a properly constructed cabinet.

John

[George Bokros]

I looked at the price of prefinished plywood for a recent vanity project. My non pro price was something like $150+ per sheet. John

WOW. My supplier (non-pro) price was $105 per sheet for 3/4" maple finished with clear one side. Could have the other side done for $20 additional. A little cheaper than your price John. The maple unfinished was $85.

[Larry Edgerton]

I'm paying $95 a sheet for 3/4" Maple finished two sides right now, and found another supplier that has some for $78 that I am going to try.

[Phil Thien]

Menards has 3/4" UV prefinished Birch for $45/sheet.

I haven't tried it, though.

But that is less than 2x the price of a sheet of melamine.

[Roy Harding]

I worked in a cabinet shop for some time before focussing on custom furniture. Although I never liked working with melamine, it definitely has its benefits - primarily, the easy to keep clean surfaces, and the interior brightness of the finished box.

When we re-did the kitchen in our last house, we used the pre-fabricated melamine cabinets you can get at the big box stores for the carcasses. I could buy them cheaper than I could buy the raw materials to make my own. I then made my own solid wood face frames, doors, drawers, and facings for the exposed parts of the white melamine. It was a good way to go for us - we achieved high end results for a low end price (and my wife was happy - that being priceless). We'll be doing the same thing in this house (if I ever get around to it).

For all the reasons others have mentioned above, I'm not sure that melamine is an appropriate material for drawers. It's not something I would do - but then again, I've never done it. I'm sure the results would be immediately pleasing - but I'm also sure that the drawers would eventually loosen up at the joints, especially the fronts (false or not), as this is where they are subjected to significant forces. All of this is, of course, my personal opinion - not based on any long-term experience with them - and while I am a cabinet maker (or joiner, as the trade is known in some places), I don't have the years of experience building cabinets that some others here have.

As for the Blumotion slides - as others have said, they are the industry standard, I don't think you'll go wrong with them.

Whatever you decide, I'm sure you'll do a wonderful job, and be happy with the results.

[Brian Tymchak]

I would use pre finished (clear finish) maple ply for cabinet boxes. I made our vanity out of it and it is bright inside and looks awesome. I use either Baltic Birch or soft maple for drawers. I round over the top edges of the drawers and they look great, even the ones made from Baltic Birch look great, even the wife approves. Not a fan of particle board for cabinets or drawers.

As for Blum Blumotion used those for the drawers for the drawers for the vanity and love them.

+1 on both counts. but I'm not a pro by any means.

[Erik Christensen]

if I am going to invest my precious free time in making cabinets I don't want to take short cuts on materials that will degrade either the quality, durability or ascetics of the finished product. I intend to retire in my current house so I am not making 'something quick' to get it sold - the things I am making I will use for the rest of my life - others build to different requrements/tastes so they of course make different material decisions. In the last 2 years I have made ~60 drawers - a complete kitchen & 3 vanities - every drawer was 3/4 solid cherry sides, 1/2" flat-sawn cherry ply bottom & blum blumotion undermount slides. All finished with transtint dye and 4-6 coats of poly. I am now building 20 drawers for the master closet and specs will be the same - only difference is I am going to use domino's vs dovetails for the sides as i agree the undermount slides take all load off the sides - all the sides do with undermounts is to keep the 'stuff' from spilling off - the pull to open force in blum slides is basically non-existent. So for me drawers are:

3/4" solid wood sides
1/2" plywwod bottoms
blum tandem with blumotion

[Rick Potter]

:No pro here, but I have been using pre-finished 1/2" BB for my drawers. My hardwood supplier carries drawer stock...8 or 12" wide by 5' long BB that has pre-finished and rounded edges. It is really handy for drawers, and the prefinished edge saves a lot of time. The 12" wide are $10 each. If I am making a drawers somewhere near 4" deep, I can get two strips with pre-finished edges and one strip that I round over for the backs or fronts.

About that price for prefinished plywood...I am getting two sided 3/4" maple (domestic) for about $68 a sheet....3 months ago.

[John TenEyck]

I would use it, too at that price if I was building a traditional style kitchen or vanity.

John