After living with the peninsula the way it was for far too long, we finally decided that it might be nice to have some doors on our cabinets!
Since we wanted the cabinets to mostly blend in with the rest of the existing kitchen, we figured traditional rail and stile cabinet doors would stick out too much (and might be a bit beyond my skill set at this point). All the other doors in the kitchen were just 3/4" plywood rectangles, so it didn't take too much convincing for me to make the new doors the same way!
I used the same 3/4" sanded Pine plywood I had used for the cabinets. By buying it at Home Depot or Lowe's, I was able to get it cut down to size on their panel saw, making the doors perfectly square. Not wanting to repeat the same mistake I made while finishing the bookcase, I made sure to really sand down the edges of the doors so that the rough plywood edge didn't show through the paint.
Getting two cabinet doors to hang perfectly level and square to each other is difficult. Not surprisingly, I'm not the first person to think this, so they make hinges that allow you to make small adjustments once the doors are mounted. European hinges come in all different styles, one of which is specifically made for mounting doors to face frame cabinets--they even have a "slow close" feature for added fanciness.
The hinges have a circular cup that sits recessed in the door, so I needed a way to drill a 1-3/8" hole... AKA I got to buy a new tool (my grandfather always says that every project should be an excuse to buy a new tool). A Forstner bit allows you to drill a perfectly clean, flat-bottomed hole--a necessity when using European hinges.
Using my drill press, I drilled a few test holes to get the depth just right, then drilled into the doors for real. The hinges came with clear instructions as to where to drill the holes and how deep to make them, so everything went together pretty easily.
We picked out hardware that comes close to matching what is already in the kitchen. If I was putting hardware on lots of cabinet doors, I probably would have taken the time to make some kind of jig to ensure they all came out exactly right, but it wasn't really worth it for just two doors.
The Mistake
As with any of my projects, I knew I would mess up somewhere along the line. The issue here is that when I cut my doors way back when I first started the cabinets, I cut them to overhang by 3/4" on all sides. When I finally got around to buying the hinges, I had totally forgotten this. These hinges are designed for a particular overhang--when I was at the store, the 1/2" ones seemed way more common, so obviously that must've been what I planned for, right?
And as is generally the case, I was in pretty deep before I realized my mistake...as in, both doors were mounted and I went to close them and realized that they banged into each other and wouldn't close all the way! At this point, I couldn't buy new hinges and redrill, so my best option was to rip 1/2" off of the handle side of each door. So of course I had to repeat all that hard work of polishing off and painting the plywood end. But in the end it was worth it--the doors closed properly and didn't look nearly as crappy as the edges of the bookcase!
The Drawer
Alright, it was finally time to tackle my biggest fear: the drawer! I'm not sure why it frightened me so much--it was as if I felt that the entire rest of the project would live or die by this one sliding, 15" box. But when I finally bought the wood and drew up the plans, suddenly it didn't feel so daunting. I chose to build a simple rabbet and dado box similar to this.
I used my router table with a 1/4" straight bit. I used 1/2" Poplar, which made it easy because all of the rabbets and dadoes were 1/4"x1/4".
While making the rabbets and dadoes (the cuts across the width of the wood), I realized that it was really difficult to keep the piece totally perpendicular to the fence by hand. what I really needed was a miter that would slide in the track to the left of the router. I have since made one, keep an eye out for that post.
To attach the bottom, I put grooves along the length of the pieces 1/4" from the bottom. I left the router set with the 1/4" bit 1/4" high and adjusted the fence 1/4" away (like I said, everything was 1/4!). I made sure to cut the 1/4" plywood bottom 1/2" bigger than the inside dimensions of the drawer to account for the groove.
With the glue set and the clamps removed, I attached the drawer rails (I had mounted the other pieces inside the cabinet before I put the countertop on).
I used the same 3/4" sanded Pine plywood I had used for the cabinets. By buying it at Home Depot or Lowe's, I was able to get it cut down to size on their panel saw, making the doors perfectly square. Not wanting to repeat the same mistake I made while finishing the bookcase, I made sure to really sand down the edges of the doors so that the rough plywood edge didn't show through the paint.
Getting two cabinet doors to hang perfectly level and square to each other is difficult. Not surprisingly, I'm not the first person to think this, so they make hinges that allow you to make small adjustments once the doors are mounted. European hinges come in all different styles, one of which is specifically made for mounting doors to face frame cabinets--they even have a "slow close" feature for added fanciness.
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| Since my drill press doesn't have a fence, I clamped down a block of wood to ensure that I was lined up properly front to back. |
Using my drill press, I drilled a few test holes to get the depth just right, then drilled into the doors for real. The hinges came with clear instructions as to where to drill the holes and how deep to make them, so everything went together pretty easily.
We picked out hardware that comes close to matching what is already in the kitchen. If I was putting hardware on lots of cabinet doors, I probably would have taken the time to make some kind of jig to ensure they all came out exactly right, but it wasn't really worth it for just two doors.
The Mistake
As with any of my projects, I knew I would mess up somewhere along the line. The issue here is that when I cut my doors way back when I first started the cabinets, I cut them to overhang by 3/4" on all sides. When I finally got around to buying the hinges, I had totally forgotten this. These hinges are designed for a particular overhang--when I was at the store, the 1/2" ones seemed way more common, so obviously that must've been what I planned for, right?
And as is generally the case, I was in pretty deep before I realized my mistake...as in, both doors were mounted and I went to close them and realized that they banged into each other and wouldn't close all the way! At this point, I couldn't buy new hinges and redrill, so my best option was to rip 1/2" off of the handle side of each door. So of course I had to repeat all that hard work of polishing off and painting the plywood end. But in the end it was worth it--the doors closed properly and didn't look nearly as crappy as the edges of the bookcase!
The Drawer
Alright, it was finally time to tackle my biggest fear: the drawer! I'm not sure why it frightened me so much--it was as if I felt that the entire rest of the project would live or die by this one sliding, 15" box. But when I finally bought the wood and drew up the plans, suddenly it didn't feel so daunting. I chose to build a simple rabbet and dado box similar to this.
I used my router table with a 1/4" straight bit. I used 1/2" Poplar, which made it easy because all of the rabbets and dadoes were 1/4"x1/4".
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| My router table setup with my test piece. |
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| The joint once assembled. It fit together really well, but I ended up with some chip out on the edges. |
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| I glued it up and clamped the crap out of it! Nothing but glue holding this baby together! |
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| The finished product (minus the false front of course) |
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| The drawer is slightly off, but once the false front is on, it will look like it is perfect! |
The false front was the same plywood as the doors, painted to match (with well polished edges!). I pre-drilled the holes for the drawer pull on the drill press and then used a spacer block to put it into place. With my 24" level, I made sure it was all squared up with the lower door and then drilled straight through the drawer front. The bolts for the drawer pull come through both the drawer front and the false front. I put two more screws in from behind just to hold everything in place, but I didn't glue the false front on for fear that something would shift down the road and I wouldn't be able to adjust it.After putting on the hardware and sliding the drawer into place, I couldn't believe that this whole thing was actually finished! It was almost bittersweet for a moment. From the day we closed on the house, the kitchen renovation had been the defining project--that which I was constantly obsessing over and talking about to friends and family who, in retrospect, probably weren't that interested. And now it was done. Our little baby house was growing up before our very eyes.
But that's enough of that, lucky for me (I guess) I have way too many other projects to think about!
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| The finished product after two months of chipping away at here and there! Not bad for under $500! |
Now that everything is said and done...
A full accounting:- 2 Sheets 3/4" Sanded Pine Ply $60
- 14 board feet of Hard Maple $67
- Pocket hole screws $15
- Ikea countertop $139
- Kitchen paint $36
- Slide out Trash bin $70
- Hinges and drawer slides $30
- Cabinet hardware $20
Kitchen makeover grand total: $437
So there you have it, the final installment in the kitchen series! The truth is, I've moved on to many more projects between finishing the kitchen and finally getting around to writing this post, so check back in to read about my next big project!
So whats the next big project?!
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