Cabinet doors

While working on an assembly table for the past ten days or so by now, I realized that I hardly documented it. Today I worked on the doors and took some photographs.


This photo is from about a week ago. After careful calculations weighing the costs of MDF and Baltic Birch ply for the cabinets.... I drove to the local IKEA and purchased eight open cabinets. After assembling them I added a sheet of the cheapest sh*t I could find with screws to the bottom and attached ten casters and checked if the cabinet structure was level. The top is a torsion box structure made from 20mm MDF which was build on top of the level base structure. As a removable top there is a 4mm sheet MDF brad nailed to the torsion box and then flushed up with a flush trim bit in the router.

Rails and stiles are made from Padouk with floating tenons. I glued the frame in two stages. What you see in the photo below has already been glued and now the 4mm MDF floating panel is inserted and the remaining stile will be glued in place.

Spreading glue.

Adding clamps and access glue removed with a rag and alcohol.

All clamped up.

At a discount store I found reasonably priced hinges. They though did not fit without a substantial 1cm gap in the IKEA cabinets' existing holes so I had to drill some extra holes a little further in to line the doors flush. I made a jig to do this which lined up by inserting 5mm drills in the existing holes to set the jig in place.

Jig in place.

Doors test fit. Here one can see the drawers too. Simple construction 18mm Baltic Birch ply glued with lose tenons and a 6mm MDF floating bottom panel.

In the following photo the doors are installed. After sanding the rails and stiles once with 100 grid paper one coat of boiled linseed oil was applied and rubbed with one coat of beeswax. (Just like the torsion MDF top and Padouk edging) The drawer fronts are attached with glue and two brad nails to hold them in place before adding clamps. The drawers, nor the drawer fronts have yet finish applied.