I hope that going over the construction of the pantry will possibly help someone out one of these days in doing their own project. Now with the readership levels this blog has, this might be a little presumptuous on my part, but maybe someday someone will stumble on the next couple entries and maybe glean a little knowledge from my mistakes.
Let’s start with where I got the basics for my design. There was a cabinetry book “Furniture & Cabinet Construction” by Andy Rae. It’s a pretty good book. It’s served me well over the years on a couple different projects. Even if you can’t get everything you need from it, the book will at least get you started. However the real inspiration for my cabinets is the man himself -Norm Abrams. I actually purchased the DVDs from the New Yankee Workshop series where Norm builds some kitchen cabinets for a friend. Now I didn’t follow his design exactly all the way through, but it’s pretty darn close. Now it’s not that I didn’t try to change things, but all the bright ideas I had to reduce cost, to make things easier to build, etc… None of them really worked out. I didn’t want to stock two or more thicknesses of plywood. I didn’t want to have to finish the insides of the cabinets. And I wanted the cabinets to be able to withstand a 9.0 earthquake or a thermonuclear detonation whichever was worse. Yeah they’re a little “over-built”, but hey, it’s my kitchen!
The basic construction of my cabinets is what is called “face-frame” construction. In simple terms, this means that the cabinet is basically a carcass (or body) made from plywood, with a dressy wood on the fronts of the cabinets to cover the not-so-pretty edges of the plywood body. The doors on my cabinets are inset. This type of door fits flush with the face of the cabinets. From my experience, this type of door is a lot of work, and I wouldn’t recommend it -unless your wife absolutely is sure that she needs it. It takes a lot of work to get this style of door to fit just right. I’ll show you what I mean later.
Now I can’t emphasize enough the importance of good plans. I thought I had a really good idea of what I wanted, but I drew out plans for each cabinet in detail -lots of detail. By doing this I accomplished a couple of things. I got to see what the cabinets would look like before they were made. This was HUGE! Maria saw all kinds of stuff that “wasn’t quite right” in what I thought the cabinets should look like, and I was able to correct these flaws before I’d cut up a bunch of expensive wood. I also found a couple of layout issues. Something like not taking into the account the thickness of a plywood panel, can make that beautiful cabinet that you just hung on the wall -something that you’ll have tear out and use in the garage later. Trust me on this one. I’ve got three upper cabinets that are too shallow to hold our dishes. They’re not garbage, but I didn’t get to use them in the kitchen. Yeah, my drawings didn’t save me from that mistake, but they did save me from a lot of others. I drew my plans on plain old paper. I would have loved to have done them on the computer, but Sketchup wasn’t around back then, and I couldn’t afford a CAD program. There are lots of great drawing programs specifically aimed at woodworkers like myself. I would have loved to have drawn up the cabinets and had a cut-list automatically generated for me, but I just couldn’t afford something like that. Paper worked for me, but the time you’ll spend erasing and throwing away your mistake drawings should more than justify taking the time and checking out the YouTube tutorials on how to use a nice free program like Sketchup.
The cabinet carcasses or bodies are made of 3/4″ pre-finished maple plywood. Not cheap stuff, but using this material offeri two things. Sides for really, really… really strong cabinets, and cabinets that don’t need to be finished on the interior. This last thing might not seem like that big of a deal. Especially if you’ve never finished cabinets before, but its a BIG deal. I’d highly recommend pre-finished plywood for the bodies. Finishing the outsides of your cabinets will be hard enough without having to crawl around inside of them with a spray gun. Plus you can use the same material and have almost instantly finished shelves, big bonus! Anything that you don’t have to spray or brush is a positive in my book.
There are several ways to attach the sides, bottom, and tops of cabinets to each other. I chose dados, glue, and screws. Now this might be overkill in some people’s books. I’ve seen cabinets that were made of particle board and just held together with 50,000 staples, but that’s not how I do things. At every joint where two pieces of plywood meet, I cut a 1/4″ deep groove in the plywood exactly the thickness of the plywood. I then slather a decent amount of glue on both edges to be joined. I clamp my cabinets together at this point. This might not be totally necessary since the screws will hold the cabinets together with more than enough force, but the clamps help hold everything together and keep everything square until the screws are in place. I don’t use a lot of clamps on the bodies, but I usually don’t take them off till everything is dry -just to make sure nothing goes wrong.
Now I wasn’t going to go into this, but I gotta get on my soapbox. Making sure your cabinets are square can’t be emphasized enough. Having your plywood cut square is a huge help in getting this right, but check those diagonals on the cabinet faces. Even if those measurements are off by fractions of an inch -it’s not square enough. Getting this first step right will make the rest of the construction and installation a breeze in comparison to the nightmare you’ll be up against if you don’t pay attention and get this right.
Here's the body of the pantry that I'm making...
Closing in on the shelf to wall joint detail...
A good example of that dado joint I was talking about earlier...
A picture of the side to back joint -just in case the first dozen pictures didn't get the idea across...
Tags: cabinets, DIY, kitchen cabinet project, Kitchen remodel
