I used a larger clamp here to keep everything from shifting while I attached the bottom piece to the other side. Repeated that process to attach other side of cabinet. This line was my guide for attaching the bottom piece.Īligned bottom piece of cabinet to sides using the line I just drew and ensuring everything stayed square! Now it’s time to build the cabinet! I wanted the bottom to sit flush with the edge of the face frame so I took that measurement and drew a straight line on the sides of the cabinet pieces. See above: You’ll see I only added pocket holes to the sides of the bottom piece… but later realized I needed them on the front side as well to attach to the face frame! Measure the inside width of face frame to determine width of bottom piece for cabinet. You also want to make sure you stay around 2″ away from the edges to avoid any other screws and possible splitting. You can strategically decide which side to put these on depending on which side of your cabinets will show less. Next, I added pocket holes to attach the front edge of the cabinet sides to the face frame. I cut my cabinet sides: 21 1/4″ depth x 30 1/2″ tall. For the depth, it will be total depth of the cabinet minus the width of the face frame since that will sit on top.Įxample: My cabinet is 22″ – 3/4″ (face frame) = 21 1/4″ Once your face frame is built, it’s time to build your cabinet bases! For this cabinet base, I’m using 3/4″ plywood material and I cut them to the entire length of the face frame. One more tip for building is to always make things square! I keep a variety of squares in my shop for various projects – it’s one of those tools you can always find a use for! Note: I also use wood glue on all of my joints before I join them together! The material can have a tendency to shift so it’s always a good idea to use a clamp to keep things secure. These right angle clamps make building with pocket holes very easy. I am using 1 1/4″ screws designed for hardwood. Once you have your pocket holes drilled, it’s time to join them together! Kreg also makes this very easy by supplying a guide to determine what size screw to use. For this face frame, I am using 3/4″ material so I set the jig and bit to 3/4″ and drilled 2 holes on each stile (vertical piece). You set both the jig and the drill bit to this setting. The first step is determining how thick your material is. Kreg makes a very user friendly system that makes this type of joinery a breeze! I am using pocket holes to join 90% of these cabinets. I chose to cut my rails the entire length so I could cut all my stiles the same size – this made more sense to me and it worked out great!Īlso note that I built one larger face frame that will attach to 2 separate cabinet boxes. Typically, the stiles run the length of the face frame and you connect the rails into those vertical pieces. Rails are the horizontal pieces of the face frame and stiles are the vertical pieces. The face frame is made up of rails and stiles. Poplar is harder than pine and still accessible at most big box stores. I am building my face frame out of 1×2 and 1×3 poplar. This ensures the cabinet is built to the correct size with no mistakes. Now for the fun part! I got a few tips from a local cabinet maker and he suggested building the face frame first. It is a design + ergonomic feature and it can range from zero to 4″ based on preference, but is typically 3.5 – 4″. Toe Kick Definition: The area below the base cabinet that is designed to allow someone to stand at a cabinet and have countertops and cabinets at arm’s length. To determine your platform depth, subtract the toe kick area from your total cabinet depth making sure to account for the width of the toe kick that you will put back on. This gives an overall height of 4.25″ for your cabinet base to sit on. I used 3/4″ plywood to top the base using 1 1/2″ screws. You can also skip this step and cut out the toe kick area with a jigsaw. This way I could build my cabinet boxes square. I decided to build a platform out of 2×4 material as a flat base to use all around the room. There are several ways to build the bases and this is just one way to get the height for the toe kick area. Does building a cabinet sound scary? It definitely did to me but I planned and researched and decided to tackle my first cabinet build when I needed a custom depth for my laundry room.
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