Thread: Kitchen cabinet door

Edging:

Most (all?) sheet goods suppliers will sell a variety of pre-glued edging.
Save yourself $600 off the souped-up hot-air gun and buy a cheap iron instead. Snap off a strip of appropriate length, iron it on on maximum heat in a slow, steady motion (you'll see the glue melt around the faces of the board), immediately rub down firmly with a hard timber block. Once cool, trim the ends, then trim the faces using the side of a chisel as a guillotine towards the centre of the board (hard to explain, I'll try to remember to take some pics to show what I mean). Practise with some scraps to get the feel for iron speed, leave it too long in one spot and you'll burn it.

Material:

If you're edging the whole thing, why use ply? Veneered MDF will be more stable and probably cheaper too.

Hardware:

If you really must use Servo-Drive, make sure all the wiring and power packs are easily accessible in the event of failure down the line. I have had one fail after a few years and we didn't have any way to access it without completely dismantling the kitchen so we had to replace it with Tip-On runners instead. If you're using Servo-Drive to get push-open and soft-close in one, Blum now make Movento runners with Blumotion AND Tip-On https://www.blum.com/au/en/01/60/40/ , I would always go mechanical over electronic for reliability. If you go mechanical, the synchroniser kit is a really good idea for Tip-On drawers over about 600mm wide.

Finishing:

You can get a surprisingly good finish with water-based poly floor polish applied with a foam roller.

Possibly going out on a lib here ...

why even consider veneered MDF, let alone ply?

It's a kitchen.
You want a "clean" "uncluttered" look.
you intend installing hardware that obviates the need for handles and pulls.

So why not use wood grain plastic laminate?
It looks like very well finished wood.
It's super easy to clean.
If building your own door and drawer fronts, it can be stuck on with contact adhesive.
It can be trimmed with a router.
If you want, the drawer sides can be treated with a matching or contrasting laminate.


BTW
you haven't said if you are making or buying the carcasses.
If making it's almost certainly worthwhile investing in a either a line drilling machine or a Festool 1010 Router and 32 mm guide rail set up.

You would need to pay me a LOT of money to get me to so an entire kitchen of drawer faces with contact and laminate. It's slow, messy and definitely more expensive than ply. You also have to do both sides or it will cup. Even if you get the melamine-based printed board, the edging is all going to be unglued abs which will have to be done with contact

Thank you for the thoughts and information so far!

I am not that keen on applying a laminate to achieve the results here - I have worked with a bit of it before, and it's very fiddly stuff - I'd be more inclined, if that was the right way to go, to hand Polytec a list and have them make up the drawer fronts for me in a thermo wrap vinyl, which I feel would give a better result and possibly last longer - this would be a last resort (almost), my aim here is for us to build something rather than buy a solution.

A veneered MDF is most certainly possible, and it's something I hadn't thought of - I had gravitated toward Birch Ply based on the finish and colour (I have a place that supplies excellent quality stuff, I've seen it), and I was hoping the fact that it was aply would give it the rigidity that would be desired in a drawer front. These folksfcan also do veneered MDF, so I will approach them to see what the cost is like, I suspect it'll work out about the same as the birch anyway I also suspect they will need to veneer both sides of the panel to prevent warping?

Thanks again, happy to hear of more ideas if others have thoughts to share!

Yep, veneer both sides. Generally you'd get DGB (down-grade back), the back face is the same species but with more defects.

I've always struggled to work out where the idea that ply is the ultimate in sheet goods comes from... It's the strongest of them for construction, but I would never willingly use it for any application where you want a stable, flat surface. It's still a natural timber product and will twist and carry on the same way timber does.

Originally Posted by Midnight Man

... if that was the right way to go, to hand Polytec a list and have them make up the drawer fronts for me in a thermo wrap vinyl, which I feel would give a better result and possibly last longer - this would be a last resort (almost), my aim here is for us to build something rather than buy a solution.

I don't want to put you off, but if the kitchen is to be kitted out with Blum hardware, apart from the carcasses, there will be very little cost or savings in the wood working involved. It will mostly be very accurate cutting and drilling.
Just producing the shop drawings will be a major accomplishment.

Hello MM,

Last year, I built a kitchen along similar lines I think. I used Finnish baltic birch ply (WISA brand) from DMK Forest Products in Brookvale. Apart from the sink cabinet and one other, all were drawers only (yes, 40 in all).

I used the BB/BB grade for the carcasses and drawers, and the S/BB for the false fronts/cabinet doors. The runners were the Blum soft close type, but conventional handle pull-out. The S/BB comes in a 3m length, so could get continuity of grain along a whole wall.

The laminations are very fine, and although not marine grade to standard, there were so few voids that my wife was happy to leave the end grain exposed - 'truth to materials'. So no edging needed.

Finish was five coats of Resene (Resene Paints, Reserve Rd, Artarmon), applied with mohair roller (didn't cause any bubbling, which is an issue with foam rollers), which was (reasonably!) painless. Being water based, adding additional coats in the future should not be a nightmare. This was of course applied to all surfaces that were not being glued.

Just to complete the description (though not of relevance to your OP perhaps, but for completeness), I used 5mm Dominoes and Titebond III for construction.

The kitchen is coming up to 18 months old, and no problems so far.

Hope this is of some relevance to what you may be contemplating.

Mark

Thank you Ian for your thoughts, and I think you're pretty much spot on, which is why I'm looking to do this myself.

Mark - thank you for this information, that's very useful indeed! I am aware of DMK, but was planning on sourcing material from Bryunzeel instead, ironically, I believe the two businesses are not far from each other. Like you, I am planning on Titebond and Dominoes for the construction, so good to know my thinking in that regard is good