So I’d been toying with the idea of doing my own cabinets for a while now, but had never thought about it seriously, but when Maria quit teaching to stay home with the kids, our lowered income had us looking at it a little more closely. Though it’s hard to estimate exactly what it’ll cost us in the end to make them ourselves, it looks like we’ll be saving at least 50% from buying from a place like Home Depot, and we’ll have much better made cabinets.
If you really want to know the basics of what I’m doing, just watch the New Yankee Workshop’s series on building a kitchen. I forked out for the DVD box set, and it’s really helped me out getting things going. If you do end up watching some of the episodes, you’ll probably notice my design was heavily influenced by Norm’s stuff.
I ordered the wood maybe 10 days ago. 20 sheets of pre-finished C3 maple, 3/4″. 2 sheets of A grade cherry, 3/4″, and two sheet of 1/4″ cherry (for the recessed door panels). Wanted something like 3/8″ for the doors, but apparently hardwood plywood doesn’t come in 3/8″ very often. Also the 1/4″ stuff actually has an MDF core. I’m not a big fan of MDF in cabinets, but this does seem like a good idea for the application I’ll be using it for. The grand total for all the plywood delivered was about $1600. Got it from PALS down in San Jose. The guys there were very helpful, and from the little research I did prior to seeing them, I don’t feel like I got ripped off or anything. Sure I didn’t get the “cabinet grade” stuff that Norm had on TV, but it looks like it’ll work fine for me.
