On Building Cabinets

Cabinet making is a trade that takes years to master, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build a cabinet unless you’ve had years of experience… with good instruction, the right tools and processes, and patience you CAN build your own cabinets.

There are lots of ways to build cabinets, and a variety of tools and materials you can use to get the job done. This is the process we use and it has served us well.

Get Organized ~ Tools & Materials

The right tools for the job are important, but they don’t need to be the best tools and to build basic cabinets you don’t need a whole shop full of them. Here’s a list of the tools you should have to build your own basic cabinets.

Tools

Table saw (with dado blade)
Miter saw
Router table or Wood Shaper (with router and 1/4” tongue & groove bit set)
Pocket screw jig
Battery powered drill and driver
5” orbital sander
Framers square, speed square & combo square
35 mm flat bottom drill bit
Cabinet door hinge jig (optional, but recommended; jig usually comes with its own drill bit)
Clamps of all sizes! 24” and 48” F clamps work fine. Pipe clamps are great. Parallel clamps are fantastic.

Materials

3/4” Plywood or MDF (4’x8’ sheet-good)
1/4” Plywood or MDF (4’x8’ sheet-good)
1”x2” S4S hardwood lumber (actual size 3/4” x 1 3/4” )
1@ x 4” S4S hardwood lumber (actual size 3/4” x 3 1/2”)
Drawer slides (we use bottom mount slides with clips; see article)
Door hinges (we use 35 mm concealed cabinet door hinges; see article)
Pocket screws (1 1/4”)
Wood glue
Sandpaper for orbital sander (120 grit and 220 grit)
Note pad and sharp pencils

Make a Plan ~ Design & Cut-List

A good build starts with a good design and a good plan. There needs to be an order of operations and design comes first. You have know what your building and what it’s going to look like when your done to be successful in cabinet making.

Design

Draw it. Draw it. Draw it. Hopefully that gets the point across. It’s very important to draw what you are going to build, before you begin building anything. With a basic drawing you can more easily and accurately figure out what and how much material you are going to need. The design can be as simple as one sketch drawing in a note book.

Make sure to take accurate measurements of any existing space that you might be building cabinets for. If there are other cabinets or walls that the new cabinets will be meeting with, it is very important to know exactly what all the dimensions of the existing elements are. If the new cabinets don’t fit the space they were built for, your going to be more then bummed out.

These were the two design options we offered the customer for the custom cabinet we built and installed in Loveland, Colorado. After install picture below.

This is the finished product. We designed this cabinet to maximize the use of space in an awkward area between existing cabinets and the wall.

This cabinet had to fit perfectly between the existing cabinets and the wall. We built custom fillers where our cabinet meets the existing cabinets to ensure a seamless fit.

Cut List

A cut list is a list of each individual part that needs to be cut and milled. A good thorough cut list will show the dimensions of the part, the material it’s cut from, and any milling such as dados and pocket screws. See an example below.

3/4” Maple or Birch plywood

Qty (2) @ [42”T x 24”W] Side Panels

Dados- 3/8” deep/ each panel

1/4” vertical (3/4” of space from back of panel)

3/4” horizontal (4” of space from bottom of panel)

3/4” horizontal (1” of space from top of panel)

Qty (2) @ [23”D x 22 3/4”W] Shelves

Qty (2) @ [4” x 22”] Runners

1/4” Maple or Birch Plywood

Qty (1) @ [42”T x 22 3/4”W

The cut list example above shows the quantity and size of the individual pieces needed to build the carcass or box for a 42”T x 24”W x 24”D base cabinet. A cut list should be made for each phase of the build; the carcasses first, then the face frames, the drawer boxes and finally the doors and drawer fronts.

Building ~ Carcasses, Drawers & Doors

This is a 42” tall base cabinet for a dry bar. It will get adjustable shelving and two frame and panel doors.

Verticals dados and horizontal dados on smaller panels can be milled on the table saw with a dado blade. This is the preferable way to run the dados.

Horizontal dados on tall panels will need to be milled with a router. Here we are using a 3/4” straight cutter bit. It can be difficult to keep all of your panels flat and square to each other while routing but it’s important to run them together in batches as shown above.

Once the milling is done it’s time to assemble. The 1/4” backs and the shelves are glued into the dados on the panels and clamped square while glue dries. Runners get pocket screwed and glued into the panels on the top and back of the cabinet for stability and structural integrity.

Make sure you have lots of clamps of all different sizes! The bigger the cabinet the more difficult it can be to keep square. Always check for square while clamping, take diagonal measurements from the front and back and check inside with a square where possible. If the outside panels of the cabinet will be covered by another cabinet it’s fine to throw a screw or nail where needed to bring or hold something together where you want it.

Building the Face Frames is the next step in the cabinet building process. Face frames are built from hardwood lumber. Painted cabinets will usually have solid maple face frames as it’s a very hard wood and paints well. Other woods such as poplar are also sometimes used for painted casework and millwork. If it’s stain grade, alder and cherry are great candidates.

On a typical cabinet we will make our face frames out of 3/4” material at 1 1/4” wide. We center on the cabinet giving a 1/4” reveal of face frame both inside and outside the cabinet. When the cabinets are installed the face frames will be screwed together leaving a 1/2” space to be shimmed between the cabinet panels.

Face Frames can be made using different methods; we typically use pocket screws to join all of our stiles and rails, and then glue and nail the pre-assembled face frame to the cabinet. This is an effective method that produces good, strong cabinets. Any nail holes are filled during prep & finish phase.

With face frames on it’s time to make the Drawers.

The drawer boxes are made with 5 pieces, 2 sides a front and a back and bottom piece. The bottom piece is set in dados run in the sides, front and back. This construction method creates a inset box on the bottom of the drawer that will be needed for the slides to work. See next picture-

We use Blum under mount drawer slides. The slides themselves mount to the side panel of the Inside of the cabinet. Brackets are mounted to the back of the cabinet to support the drawer and clips are installed on the bottom of the drawer box itself to lock into the slides.

Drawer boxes are built and installed. Next up are the drawer fronts.

Drawer fronts can be made in various styles. Here we used maple plywood and edge banding to create “slab” fronts. Once cut and edge banded the slab fronts are applied to the front of the drawer boxes and adjusted for consistent reveals.

Similar to drawer fronts, Doors can also be made in a variety of styles. We typically build shaker style, aka frame and panel doors. Shaker doors are relatively simple to construct and look good either painted or stained. The frame is made up of hardwood stock (usually maple, oak or similar hardwoods) that is cut and shaped into the rails and stiles. The panel is usually 1/4” plywood, though we sometimes make glass doors this way as well.