Gayus Wood

These cabinet plans simply add doors to the open wall cabinet. The beauty of building cabinets using the 32mm system is that the box (or cabinet carcass) is the same whether the cabinet is open, has drawers, doors, or any combination thereof. And just like the open wall cabinet, the size can be adjusted to fit your room perfectly.
Doors As usual, I dont stray from my general affinity to melamine. In this free kitchen cabinet plan, the box and doors are listed as white melamine with PVC edge banding. This is a durable combination, but doesnt contribute much character to your finished cabinets.

Heres where your basic cabinet can take on its own personality and really show off your creativity. There are nearly an infinite number of ways to customize your cabinet doors.

They can utilize simple plywood slabs, raised or recessed panels, carved solid wood, super durable thermofoil, inlaid veneers, varied grain directions, and paints or different colored stains. Cabinet doors styles are only limited by your imagination, so experiment and make them truly your own creation.

There are a few things to watch out for if you choose something other than a slab door with 0.5mm thick edge banding for your cabinet plans. First, the cutlist shows dimensions for the door before edge banding is applied. If you arent using 0.5mm thick edge banding, then you need to use the dimensions from the door layout elevation.

Basically, allow a 3/8" (10mm) gap (called a reveal) at the top, 1/16" (1.5mm) reveal at the outside edges of the cabinet box, and 1/8" (3mm) reveal between the two doors. The doors fit flush to the bottom of the cabinet. This will keep the door at the correct size for proper hinge clearance.

Next, try to stick with a door that is pretty close to 3/4" (19mm) thick. Most concealed euro-style hinges are designed to fit a 3/4" thick door panel. If you go much thinner or thicker than that, you may have trouble with the hinges fitting and problems with the door opening and closing properly.

Finally, when using five-piece (raised or recessed panel) doors, the stiles (vertical pieces of solid wood) need to be wide enough for the hinge to fit. Its okay to make the stiles narrow, but then you will need to use a smaller hinge like the Blum Mini Hinge.
Hinges I cant say enough good things about using three-way adjustable, concealed, euro-style hinges. They make door hanging and adjustment very easy. Because of their opening geometry, they also allow two cabinets to butt directly together without the doors binding. The gap between the hinge edge of two doors on adjacent cabinets really does only need to be 1/8" (3mm).

When buying hinges, be sure to get both the hinge and the mounting plate, since they are often sold separately. If youre using full system holes, then an Expando dowel mounting plate is a great way to go.

The Expando dowels are very strong, fit into 5mm system holes, and dont damage the system holes like euro screws do...just in case you make a mistake. If you arent using full system holes, then a screw-on mounting plate is your best bet.

For the hinge itself, the cabinet plans show a pair of 5/16" (8mm) holes in addition to the 1 3/8" (35mm) hinge cup hole. This design is for a press-in hinge arm. The press-in style uses a dowel that is similar to the Expando dowel, but is actually designed to be pressed in by machine.

It can also be easily tapped in with a hammer and small block of wood. The hinge can then be removed and reinstalled several times without damaging the door. This is a nice feature if you want to fit the hinges first, then remove them to finish the door with paint or lacquer.

Another good way to mount the hinge is to use a screw-on hinge arm. In this case, omit the extra 5/16" (8mm) holes on the door and just drill pilot holes for #6 wood screws. I actually prefer the press-in style for the ability to remove and reattach the hinge several times.

Repeatedly removing and reinstalling wood screws tends to weaken the wood fibers in the door. If you only plan to do it once or twice (say for finishing), then its okay. Otherwise you might be better off sticking with the press-in hinges.

Buying Hardware Online Some of the links on this site take you to product pages on Amazon.com, so just a quick note about buying cabinet hardware from Amazon. There are two or three major internet cabinet hardware suppliers that sell their products on Amazon. They all have similar offerings, good reputations, reasonable prices, and decent shipping rates.

If you want to save a bit of money, try to find one supplier that has everything youre shopping for, and place your entire order with them.

The listed shipping rates are often not just for a single piece of hardware. It might cover everything in an entire order, up to a certain dollar amount. So you may be able to get a great deal on shipping by combining your whole order under one supplier.

Drawing File For a more in-depth discussion of euro-style hinges, take a look at the notes on the 2 door base cabinet plans. Otherwise, just click on the link below. If youd like to download a copy to your computer, right click then "save-as". Either way, youll need the Adobe reader to view the file.

View or Download "2 Door Wall Cabinet 30W x 12D x 30.5T"

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Here are some pretty cool pics of the first coat of spar urethane on one side of the door. Spar urethane is in the tung oil family, and is best for exterior use. Each side of the door will get three coats, sanded to 220 between each coat. Ready for Saturday install??? Hope so!

Fitting the Panels and Cutting Rabbet for the Glass















These last few days Ive been busy with the door project; with the main frame essentially complete I focused on the four door panels. These are solid Oak about 1 1/8" thick and needed to be rabbeted on all four sides to slide into the 1/2" door dados. The dados were cut about 1/4" deeper than needed to allow the panels to expand and contract as all solid wood will do over time. A straight forward procedure that first establishes the width and depth of the panel rabbets with my marking gauge and then starting the cut with my skew rabbet plane by Veritas. Ive read a few reviews of this plane and it seems like most have been good but to be frank, I still cant seem to find a rhythm with it. Maybe its just me but this plane never quite lived up to expectations. After using it for a year or more now I still seem to get inconsistent results.? Perhaps its the angled front knob that throws me off or the uncomfortable side profile while in use...could be the knobs that hold the fence in position have come loose on me a few times while in use and I find when I really tighten the little turn screws down to keep things tightly in place, I need a pair of pliers to get them open again.? anyone else have any thoughts on this plane? Whatever the reasons are its not my favourite plane to use for the entire process of cutting rabbets. (as a side note I should say that my small plough and large router planes by Veritas are great tools that I use daily; just seems the skew block has some issues-at least in my hands!)
So with that in mind I begin the rabbet with the Veritas and once a shallow groove is established Ill switch over to my medium sized shoulder plane to finish off the cuts. I get better results with this approach and clean things up with my side rabbet planes to complete. Again I apologise, no shots of these last few steps...been so busy trying to get this project done that the camera is sometimes an after thought! Sorry...
With the panels cut and fit Ill lay out the larger rabbets around the window section. This is basically the same procedure as the last and I did remember to turn on the camera.
To begin, a nice deep scribe line with the marking gauge on the back of the door.

With the rabbet widths and depths nicely scribed into the Oak Ill go ahead and dis-assemble things to begin the process. Again its a combination of the skew rabbet plane to start, followed by my shoulder plane. These are all stopped rabbets so each end of the channel needs to be cut with my large router plane. I work my way down through the fiber until I reach my desired depth. This procedure is generally the same for the four components but after I did the first two I started to remove the waste with a little more gusto. In the photos you may notice a large Japanese style chisel on my bench top; for removing this waste in a hurry I resorted to the bash and crash of the 1 3/8" wide steel and my heavy mallet.

















Once the bulk of the material is removed I clean up the bottom and sides of the groove with again the shoulder plane and router to get tight into the corners...
another dry fit to check and I can move on.






















I follow these same steps and complete the other three rabbets getting a little more aggressive with the mallet and chisel as I go; these rabbets are big and deep and in this small work space the simple task of taking a style, cutting a rabbet, fitting the rail and then taking it apart and fine tuning things is a real workout. As the door gets closer to completion my shop is feeling smaller and smaller. I can safely say that this is the first and the last door Ill attempt to build in this workspace.
From here its on to some more hand planing but my spirits are lifted because Im very happy with the results so far. This planing session should be one of the last and my smoothing plane is taking paper shavings off of the stock. Another dry fit and I can start to get set-up for the mouldings...
















Hallelujah!