Cabinet Door Question

[Larry Fox]

Ok, so I am getting to the point where I can see the end of the road for the door portion of my kitchen cabinet project and I have a question. I am making full overlay doors and am planning on using the hinges where you need to drill a hole in the door for the "cup". My question is, is it better to drill the hole before or after the door is finished? Before seems more intuitive to me but in the book I am roughly following (Schmidt) the sequence the author uses seems to imply that he drills the holes after the door is finished.

BTW: I am not in any way attached to the "cup" style hinges. It is just that this is my first set of cabinets and this is what the author recommends. In other words, I am open to suggestions if someone can recommend a better hinge solution.

Thanks in advance for your time . . .

Larry

[Bob Lang]

There are pros and cons either way. Most of the time I go ahead and finish first. The advantage is that you don't have to worry about gunking up the hole with finish, the down side is you need to be careful not to scratch the finished doors while drilling & installing the hinges.

Since it's you first time, I'd reccomend drilling and fitting the doors before you finish. If something goes wrong that you need to trim or fill, you won't end up finishing the doors a second time.

Bob Lang

[Chris Rosenberger]

I mount all hinges on the doors & then mount the doors on the cabinets before finishing. It is easier to correct an error before the finish is applied.
One thing to remember is that cup hinges limit the profiles you can use on the outside edge of the door.

[frank shic]

larry, udo scmidt's book on building kitchen cabinets is full of fantastic advice. i built my kitchen cabinets in the same style as his complete with the arched glass mullion doors. i drilled my doors after finishing them on top of a leftover piece of 3/8" melamine to prevent them from getting scratched on the drill press table.

chris makes a very good point about taking into account the outside profile because if your doors are less than 3/4" thick and you run a recessed roundover profile around the perimeter and then drill the cup hole too deep, you can easily drill through the front of the door - make sure you set the depth stop before drilling, ok?

it seems like a pain to have to go through the extra steps of boring a cup hole and then drilling the screw holes but fitting the doors is actually quite easy if you're using the european hinges since you have THREE way adjustability compared to the standard hinges.

[Steve Clardy]

Always drill cup holes before.
I even drill them before I finish sand the doors.
No scratches to wood, or finish.

[Lamar Horton]

I'm with Steve.

[Brian Jarnell]

Ditto.
Always

[Larry Fox]

Thanks for all the replies - most helpful as usual.

Follow-up question, does anyone have a rule-of-thumb about where the cup holes should be drilled (both distance from side of door as well as spacing from top to bottom)?

As usual, thanks in advance for your time . . .

Larry

[Lamar Horton]

I drill mine between 2-3 inches from the top and bottom, but there is no hard fast rule. As far as from the side of the door 3mm is typical. This is a critical dimension as the edge of the door needs the clearance from the face frame when it is open. Blum hinges have a diagram as to how many hinges per door in relation to the size of the door. HTH

[Steve Clardy]

I use salice hinges. 3mm from edge.
Top to bottom, usually 3" to center of cup hole