At last, I finally had time to make some progress on the doors and drawer fronts. Over the past few months, I made a couple of trips to Kettle Moraine Hardwoods to pick up 4/4 soft maple for this project. This was what I used to make face frames for the new island cabinet as well as for the door and drawer front frames. Lots of work with the jointer and planer to square up and straighten the rough-cut lumber into something that passes as kitchen cabinetry!
So, what are we doing?
We selected with a simple flat panel "Shaker-style" door profile, built at home. To select the rail and stile dimensions, we started off by looking at a couple of prototypes, with varied widths of rails and stiles. We liked the wider bottom and top rails (3" is what we selected) with a standard 2 1/4" stile (Option A, on the left). We tried a 2 1/2" stile (on the right) but it was too 'chunky'. Since I put the wood shop in the basement, this sort of customization of rail and stile dimensions is possible (and manageable)!:
We'll continue this theme for the drawers, except with thinner horizontal rails (1 1/2" instead of 3"), which works better with the 6"overall drawer height.
Lots of work to do: there are a total of 40 doors and drawer fronts for this kitchen, for a total of 200 total pieces to be cut, sanded, and overall managed in this project (40 middle panels, 40 sets of rails, and 40 sets of stiles). Of course, I made a spreadsheet, taking into consideration router bit profile allowance, opening dimensions, and other relevant info:
I'm fortunate to have all week off between Christmas and the start of the new year. My plan for the holiday break is to work on cutting and machining the lumber so we can get started on painting and otherwise getting these ready to install. Since our new fridge is here, the end is in sight!
So, what are we doing?
We selected with a simple flat panel "Shaker-style" door profile, built at home. To select the rail and stile dimensions, we started off by looking at a couple of prototypes, with varied widths of rails and stiles. We liked the wider bottom and top rails (3" is what we selected) with a standard 2 1/4" stile (Option A, on the left). We tried a 2 1/2" stile (on the right) but it was too 'chunky'. Since I put the wood shop in the basement, this sort of customization of rail and stile dimensions is possible (and manageable)!:
We'll continue this theme for the drawers, except with thinner horizontal rails (1 1/2" instead of 3"), which works better with the 6"overall drawer height.
Lots of work to do: there are a total of 40 doors and drawer fronts for this kitchen, for a total of 200 total pieces to be cut, sanded, and overall managed in this project (40 middle panels, 40 sets of rails, and 40 sets of stiles). Of course, I made a spreadsheet, taking into consideration router bit profile allowance, opening dimensions, and other relevant info:
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| Hello, Excel! |
I'm fortunate to have all week off between Christmas and the start of the new year. My plan for the holiday break is to work on cutting and machining the lumber so we can get started on painting and otherwise getting these ready to install. Since our new fridge is here, the end is in sight!
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