2 designing your cabinets

In this video I'm going to show you how to get started thinking about the design

of your kitchen cabinets. The first two steps are related to each other and they

have to do with determining overall dimensions of the cabinets themselves. You don't have to deal too specifically with numbers at this stage. Our job is

just to deal in broad stroke concepts with some dimensions and proportions

Start by grabbing a piece of paper and something to draw with and get ready to

doodle. I'm drawing some upper cabinets here and if you can manage a little bit

of 3d action then your drawings will serve you better. 36 inches is a good

overall height to consider for your upper cabinets and 13 inches is a

reasonable front to back depth. When it comes to the lower cabinets they're of

course deeper from front to back but at this stage the numbers don't really mean

a whole lot. They're just a starting point for you to begin the

customization process for the cabinets to suit your space and your needs

For now think of the lower cabinets as being about 36 and a half inches tall plus or

minus. That includes the countertop with an overall width of 23 inches

What we don't know at this stage is how long they're going to be

That's okay though because we'll get to fine-tuning these overall dimensions later on

Step three of this initial process involves imagining the overall layout of your

cabinets. So that's the top-down view as if you're looking at things from the ceiling

The name of the game here is to consider the traffic flow through your

kitchen given the fact that you'll be preparing food, eating it, and cleaning

up in the space. The most convenient layout for a kitchen involves an L-shaped

footprint of some kind and within this footprint there needs to be room for

three different elements. The fridge, the range, and the sink. You can orient these

elements differently to each other depending on what you want but taken

together the footpath from one element to another should equal approximately 19

to 21 feet. If it's less than this then the space could probably feel cramped to

you and if it's more you're going to be walking more than you need to

Step four is when you get to start thinking like a woodworker. With your overall

footprint in mind you now have to start imagining how the different legs of the

upper and lower cabinets would be built and that means doing some more drawings

None of this needs to come down to numbers just yet but you do need an

overview to start getting your thoughts together. So imagine we've got a kitchen

it's an L-shaped footprint of upper and lower cabinets in a corner and there's

also an island in this kitchen layout. So the question to ask yourself now is what

will the internal structure look like? Well of course there's going to be an

end panel and there's going to have to be similar panels and ends around the

major elements of the kitchen especially the fridge and the range. At this stage

you should probably refer back to the overall three-dimensional plans that show

how the cabinet boxes go together and with those ideas in mind you can better

decide where you want to start and stop cabinets as they form each leg of the layout

The dark lines I'm drawing here represent the three-quarter inch thick plywood gables that divide sections of the cabinets from each other and in some

cases divide up cabinets themselves. It can be built and managed separately but

installed together. So here at the back we have the end of the cabinet with the

fridge in it. Now on either side of something like this I might consider

some drawers and a drawer compartment would also be defined as another one of

these three-quarter inch plywood gables. Same goes for the range. You have to make

decisions now about whether a space is for drawers or cupboard space with

shelves behind a door. As you're roughing out these structural concepts keep in

mind that there should never be any more than 30 inches maximum of space between

vertical members so between these plywood dividers. That 30 inch maximum is

just to keep the cabinet strong and rigid. Step five is when you should start

thinking about face frame elements and other details in a broad stroke sort of

way. For example let's consider the front of some upper cabinets. The vertical face

frame members are called stiles and they go right from the top of the cabinet to

the bottom. Stiles will of course be found on each end of a cabinet but also

in the middle covering whatever plywood divider you've located there. The horizontal members that fit between the stiles are called rails. On this design

of face frame cabinet there is no face frame on the bottom it's just the

plywood bottom that's been capped with solid wood edging but stiles and rails

in this design should be about two and a quarter inches wide. That's two and a

quarter inches of actual visibility which does matter on the top if you're

using some sort of a crown molding. The rails up there will have to be a little

bit wider in order to get that two and a quarter inch apparent width. The widths

of the stiles and rails for the doors should follow the same proportions about

two and a quarter inches for both. This pattern continues with the design of the

raised panels that form the doors. They'd have a beveled edge and the width

of that edge should also be about two and a quarter inches maybe a little bit

narrower but tending towards that width as well