Steven Knowlton
09-27-2018, 1:32 AM
I'm a complete newbie to this forum. Glad to be here.
So here's something that I'm curious about.
I would like to make custom cabinets for an alcove in my house. This alcove is about 65 inches wide, and is a kind of "butler's kitchen." The builder installed, some 24 years ago, two base cabinets and two standard wall cabinets, all frameless. They are both made of cheap half-inch melamine, although the doors are OK, they appear to be pure hardwood material, even the raised panel. Both top and bottom cabinets appear to be standard 32-inch wide cabinets with a 1/2 inch of "filler" on either side to make up the 65 inches.
If I want to install face frame cabinets with no "filler" pieces, do I plan for the outer face frames to be about an 1/8 inch more than I need? And then scribe/plane them down? Do professionals plan for less than 1/8"? Also I don't know for sure that the space is square. Perhaps I should study the walls with a little more precision?
Also, I'm having someone else finish the face frames before I mount them on the cabinets. That means that if I plane off some of the side of the face frame to fit the wall, I could screw up the finish on the adjoining (front) face of the material.
Am I on the right track here? Is there a better way to do this? I don't want to be the only person west of the Atlantic doing this.
So here's something that I'm curious about.
I would like to make custom cabinets for an alcove in my house. This alcove is about 65 inches wide, and is a kind of "butler's kitchen." The builder installed, some 24 years ago, two base cabinets and two standard wall cabinets, all frameless. They are both made of cheap half-inch melamine, although the doors are OK, they appear to be pure hardwood material, even the raised panel. Both top and bottom cabinets appear to be standard 32-inch wide cabinets with a 1/2 inch of "filler" on either side to make up the 65 inches.
If I want to install face frame cabinets with no "filler" pieces, do I plan for the outer face frames to be about an 1/8 inch more than I need? And then scribe/plane them down? Do professionals plan for less than 1/8"? Also I don't know for sure that the space is square. Perhaps I should study the walls with a little more precision?
Also, I'm having someone else finish the face frames before I mount them on the cabinets. That means that if I plane off some of the side of the face frame to fit the wall, I could screw up the finish on the adjoining (front) face of the material.
Am I on the right track here? Is there a better way to do this? I don't want to be the only person west of the Atlantic doing this.