DIY Base Cabinet Build for food pantry Part 1

hey guys this is paul from smart easy diy today i wanted to show you how i built my own cabinets for our food pantry these are for the base cabinets we're going to do shelves above it which i'll cover in a future video man cabinets are expensive and you probably realize that if you're watching this video that's why i decided to build my own i built them in place hopefully watching this video will be helpful to give you some ideas for the things how i did it and some mistakes that i made that i can pass along to you guys so you don't make the same ones i will have part two of this cabinet build coming out soon after this one so be sure to watch out for that i did a poll on my channel and you guys mostly voted for having a two-part video instead of one really long one so that's what i decided to do all right guys let's get right to it this is what our room looks like when you walk into it i don't have a door on it yet but that's going to be a future project so this right here we kind of already had always planned to do this in here when we built the house we just never got around to it so right here in the left side is going to be an upright freezer or a fridge we haven't decided which one yet and then it's going to be kind of u-shaped like i showed in the picture and then on the right is either the freezer or the fridge depending how we want to switch it up so i'm probably going to do open shelving above that because we have 10-foot ceilings so lots of room for that yeah so we ended up pulling the floor out as far as we needed to to get the cabinet in here then i just went to lowe's that's where i ended up getting the two by threes and you can see we got it all torn out here i'm starting to make some marks so here i wanted to show you i'm out in my shed excuse the mess it's really cold out but it's the only spot i have that it's not snowing and blowing when i'm doing this but what i want to show you here quick is i just ripped a piece of treated half inch strip to put on the bottom it was cheaper that way than to buy something else like treated plywood and i wanted to put that down just as a precaution because this here is going to be sitting on the concrete even though it has a plastic liner underneath it okay so just getting it laid out in here getting some marks on the wall so this mark here is where i just laid it out for rough framing it's going to get some plywood on the sides so the plywood goes on the outside of that so i'm leaving a gap here on the side for the freezer over on that side and there's going to be a fridge over here on the other side so i just had to pull the flooring back to there and then this is the framing for the top i actually moved it up an inch because it wasn't quite tall enough for the shelf space that we're gonna have we didn't have enough room for a five gallon bucket so that's why we we raised it up then here's where i put the treated on the bottom right here you can see that's where i'm going to rest that down right on top of the plastic in here because there's concrete underneath that's going to go all along the bottom and this one goes all along the top and then we're going to do something in the middle where it needs it so we just wanted to show you a few time lapses throughout the video here of what i did so i'm fasting this with grk three-inch screws that are made for treated lumber they're the good ones the grks i really like those those and the youtube fasteners are both really good screws in my opinion just from using them so i'm doing the top and the bottom using the level making sure that it's nice and level as i go across there so it's working good so i got the top and bottom supports installed here and i figured it doesn't really matter where i put the screws in where i put the joints on the two bys so i just made them the same and i stayed back at least two sections that way the piece on the end isn't quite as short i do apologize a lot of this is just me putting screws in and stuff but i figured it might be helpful for some of you to see how i did it like what my processes were and stuff but anyway it's nice when you're doing level across corner you can double check it even if your walls are level you want to double check it and it's awesome when it turns out like that so it's hard to know sometimes what to talk about with these different time lapses going on just watching myself work but i didn't know if i should put music in sometimes i put music in and people complain about music i try to keep it quiet if i do so maybe i'll experiment with doing a little more background music on some of these because they are quite lengthy also some of you may not be aware but i am on instagram at smart easy diy and i share a lot of behind the scenes stuff in my stories daily and projects like this so if you were on instagram and following me you would be the first ones to see when i do projects like this so if you want come along and follow me on there that'd be fun to have you over there so it's just kind of a different way of showing things and a little more personal if you want to message me and stuff like that with questions so i'm just getting the frame put together here you probably could tell the time lapse is pretty much what i was doing getting that screwed together so i wanted to show you on the bottom down here i didn't run treated all the way underneath just because i wanted to make one two by four eight reach all the way because i believe i was able to get about five strips out of there if i remember correctly with the saw cuts in there and the other part of the cabinet's going to come across here so that's going to support it the front of the cabinet so i didn't feel there was a need to get it all the way across there so the main part of the cabinet is going to be supported so that's just my situation with having a concrete floor for this even though my walls aren't perfectly square i'm using a rafter square and making sure that they're square off of each other when i go ahead and do my measurement off of the wall to get the one going across there so just want to double check it that's what i did and it worked out pretty good [Music] this kreg jig clamp i'm going to show later in the video because i'm going to use it quite a bit but i found it actually works pretty good for when i'm doing this face frame part here because it kind of keeps it from moving one way it doesn't really help it the other way but it keeps it at least in position the one way so it's pretty easy to fasten so i really highly recommend having one of those clamps [Music] so the plywood for the bottom and the shelves and the end panels i got at lowe's this is a maple hardwood plywood three-quarter inch i decided to go heavy duty 57 a sheet roughly at the time of making this video and then the half inch were about ten dollars a sheet cheaper than that and these half inch ones were for the end panels by the fridge in the freezer of the cabinet and so yeah it worked out pretty good they rip it in half for you it's easier for transportation it was for me and i'm going to end up pre-ripping it more accurately when i'm done this part i was just going to tell you that i didn't put treated underneath these supports as well except for on the long part of the back wall here i did one in the middle just because i had a little bit extra but otherwise i didn't worry about it because the front and the back are supported it was treated so and i ran out so that's why i did that [Music] so just the way that the plywood layout came out on mine particular situation here is i was able to do that and i can get a full sheet if i splice it right there and then on this side on the right i can run it into that corner so it goes past and then this one just butts into it and by doing that i can get it in one full sheet by doing all of it i put an extra block in here to support the corner going that way that way it's fully supported just to show you don't have to have everything perfect when you're doing projects i'm just working out of my 10 by 16 shed here you can see i got random stuff sitting everywhere i got an old recliner here which i mean hey i got to take a break now and then you know but i don't have enough room here for everything so a ladder is kind of shoved in that corner it normally sits over here but i got my saw which i have a bunch of stuff from cutting in here and i'm just kind of making a mess out of my shed anyway just so i can do this project and i had a couple old towels and shirts that i put down just to protect the face side of the plywood because i'm actually going to share another tip with you so this is the the not as nice side of plywood so if you cut with that up like you cut it upside down basically then it does a cleaner cut on the face on the nice side that you're going to see so like this is the face right here the nice part so you would flip it over and cut it from there because the blade makes a cleaner cut on the part as it's like entering the wood if that makes sense here's a good example of the cut i was just talking about see how it peeled up on that we made some little slivers right there on this face side look at how clean that is compared so that's the difference it chips it up and if it's down on the back side where you'll never see it then that's what you want also by the way since i don't have my garage yet this is actually that shed that i made i made a video about it it's a 10 by 16 it's a really kind of a nice size for most things so i'll link to that right there if you want to check that jet build out it's actually it was a really fun project to do for this i was going to mention again this is how my plywood layout came when i measured from the left side over to there it was seven feet and it came out good with being half a sheet that way and i was able to get this one which was almost five feet and then this one is about three feet by butting against it i know it doesn't look symmetrical but it worked out really good and that way it didn't waste any material more than i had to for my particular one yours hopefully will come out better this is actually a factory cut so the cuts weren't perfect but and it's chipped out there but it's going to get covered when the supports are in there so i'm not too worried about it for a food pantry i think it'll work just fine so but depending what you're doing you may want to get a little more particular with how the cuts fit so to nail this down i just use a finish nailer that i borrowed from work it worked really good so i wouldn't go out and buy one if i didn't have one i'd probably use trim head screws or something but since i did i used some two inch finish nails and get away with inch and a half even would hold that just fine but just to kind of show you what i did that worked out good so after i got the floor in there i decided that i wanted to do some quarter inch maple plywood it matches and it was about 28 dollars a sheet at lowe's so it was about 56 dollars to do this because i needed two sheets to get it all covered up and so i got those put in there and you may wonder why i put the small pieces in the corner it's because of the way the stud layout came out i'll show you here in just a little bit when i get around from a different angle here but i use the crown stapler to fasten them it worked pretty good you could use liquid nails or whatever you wanted to do so you can see stud layout if i went all the way with a full sheet first i'd come out with just a little six inch strip there and barely be able to fasten it with doing the small strips in the corner i was able to get a bigger strip and then i could fasten it better and then you know that's just how it worked out good for my particular stud layout so of course it'll be different in your situation but i really like how it turned out it makes it look like a nice finished cabinet that way it just protects the drywall because we're going to be shoving in heavy buckets in there and stuff so it'll protect that and i think for the price difference in the overall scheme of the project 56 dollars really wasn't that big of a thing to do that and i think it looks a lot better and it'll hold up a lot better so my personal recommendation if you're doing a built in in place do it this way that's my opinion but there's some gaps there that weren't perfect either if you're worried about them you could use wood filler and fill them i wasn't worried about them because they're going to be back in the corner where you'll never see it and for my particular use again i'm just shoving buckets in there so it really wasn't a concern to me so you have to decide how you want to do that part all right so next i'm getting some supports put in here on this end and then on the other far end which i'll show you in just a sec right there all right so i'm putting the middle shelf support in here i'm just using a cabinet screw to fasten those you could glue them if you wanted to as well or liquid nail them i suppose this is just what i chose to do and it seemed to work well so again any of this stuff you guys can do whatever you want to do if it you know works out better for you it's just to give you ideas of what i did so i just used the inch and a half by three quarter which is technically one by two and got it as narrow as possible that way it didn't take up much room in the back so the buckets can still slide all the way under in and it worked out really good so i'm out here my workbench again and i'm cutting the shelf for the middle of the cabinet so what i want to show you i'm cutting everything from the back side again so it doesn't chip up and i didn't want it to chip up because the veneer on this is really thin on the face so what i did is i just over cut a little bit because you're never going to see it down below i over cut it a little bit and then finished it with a knife down below to make sure that it came out really well so this is a middle one this is a little bit of an extreme case but i made so i would watch it and i came out to where i was close to going through but not quite did the same thing here i mean it was through but what i mean is that i didn't over cut it in on the underside and then i also cut in this way and then overcut about a quarter inch going this way and then i was able to finish it out with a knife and it looks really good from the other side so that's just an option of something you can do if you don't have a jigsaw or anything like that and i'm afraid a jigsaw would chip up the face anyway check out my cuts from the front see they look really clean that way so they should work just fine i cut them just a little bit oversized around my supports because you'll never see them so in a way this was the trickiest part of the whole build i feel like getting this shelf put in here because i had to get some of the cabinet built before i could get in here so i know where to level off of for my supports and stuff because i wanted to notch it outside in my shed ahead of time where the supports are going to go but i had to get it in here without too many supports in the top in the way so it's kind of like threading a needle to get it in there but i was able to do it this is the biggest piece so this is the main one i have to be concerned about the little ones will go in there no problem but i got it in there i had leveled ahead of time the marks worked out good now i can go ahead and get my supports put in once it's in place but so that was kind of the trickiest part i made it a little bit oversized the notches just in case so i didn't have any problems getting them in there so you can try to cut them as perfect as possible but if you use framing lumber like i did they do vary just a little bit so i gave myself just a little bit of room and it worked out really well to do it that way so i'm putting the middle support in right here now i did make a mistake here on this shelf which i will discuss at some point in the video but i would recommend keep the shelf at least a quarter inch back if you do put a hinge in the middle my problem was i ended up doing three hinges and it was in the way so i ended up having to notch it back later so i'd recommend don't make it as tight as i did to the front the shelf leave yourself at least a maybe a half an inch to work with just because then you won't interfere with the hinges at all so for the shelf supports initially i was going to do some metal supports but i decided for strength i think these will be stronger so i just doubled them up underneath there i made them the same height as the top of the shelf back there at the bottom of the shelf i should say that way the measurements were the same and i screwed them from the back side so you don't see the screws and then on the face there i'm planning to do some kind of poplar strip to hopefully finish that off a little better so it is a little bit thicker that's the only thing that i didn't like the looks of as much it's a little thicker but i think it's going to be nice and strong and i thought about even putting metal supports where the two come together across there but i think they're going to be just plenty fine strong enough the way they are so the other thing is i use some trim head screws to fasten this shelf with into place instead of nailing it like i did the bottom which you can do either or if you want one reason i did is because i didn't have the nailer anymore and the other is i figured these will be in case i would ever have to remove it for some reason which i don't know why i would but i ended up doing it with these and they just have a really small head so they really aren't very noticeable and you could easily screw the bottom as well instead of just a shelf but that's what i did so here i'm just cutting and notching just to show you a little bit how that works so that end one went in really nice and well so the trickiest really was that big piece so i don't know if you're gonna have a similar situation as i did but that's just something to think about so overall i feel like the cuts turned out pretty good and everything you can see right there is where i was talking about you could put a metal piece underneath if you wanted and put some short screws in if you wanted to support it a little better but it seems plenty strong just from me pushing on it and stuff with being supported on both sides and it's three quarter inch plywood so it is strong already that's one reason i went with three quarter because i'm going to be doing five gallon buckets like i said and stuff so yeah overall i'm really happy how it turned out some of the cuts aren't completely perfect like when i notched it it's hard you know because you're dealing with drywall that's not perfect and you're dealing with material that's not always quite perfect and so you know if you're worried about it you probably wouldn't be framing it you know with framing lumber anyway but if you're worried about it after the fact it's done in there you could use wood filler or sealed up somehow maybe if you're worried about it but i thought you know it's better to have a little bit of room in there than to fight it when i'm getting it in there so overall i was happy with it just mainly wanted to show you how i did it for ideas for you guys so then now that i got that shelf in now i can put all the top supports in for the countertop so i put those all in i got my handy clamp going there and it worked really good to kind of fasten one end and then use a square make sure it's square well you put one screw in then make sure it's square and then you can go ahead and fasten the other end and the clamp really helped to keep it in place so i highly recommend those crank jig clamps and i'll include links down in the video description for any of the tools that i'm using like all the different craig jig stuff that i use throughout this video which i found so super handy and if you do any other kind of diy projects they are well worth it i think so i will include links for those down there and if you do buy them through my link it won't cost you any extra but it will help to support my channel i'll get a small commission for that so that would be greatly appreciated now for the front of the shelves i got this bandit edge banding and it is uh pretty cool stuff it makes it look so much better i wanted it on the face there and this is white birch in particular it looks very very close to the maple so i recommend that one if you do do the maple and i will link to that where you can find it as well and this stuff is just pre-glued and you iron it on so you have to sand ahead of time this is the three-quarter inch width because that's the width of my shelves i don't know if they make it in different widths or not but that's what i'm using and i'm using a 220 grit sandpaper to sand the face there and then i'm using an iron with some aluminum foil on it you can use that or craft paper they say and do it on the cotton setting when you do this and once you get it nice and hot of course it'll regulate temperature if it's a decent iron and then you just want to prep that make sure to sand it really well and it should take it really well so here i am just sanding some different angles so you can see did a few time lapses of that then i pre-cut it to length you can just cut it with a scissors and you can iron it on there and again the one mistake i made was making my shelf out even with the front so you want to make sure to leave yourself at least a half an inch there if you're going to put hinges in or else you're going to have to notch it later like i had to do which you'll see probably in the second video you'll see how i had to do that but i'll show you a little clip of that as well so but it worked really good i just used my son's play-doh roller because that's all i could find but they say to roll it on to get all the you know wrinkles out of it or whatever which it doesn't really wrinkle but you just kind of have to get a feel for how long to hold it on there you don't want to burn it or anything which the aluminum foil helps for that but you want to make sure that it gets hot enough so that it stays on there so it glues really well all right guys so the next thing that i did i'm building these face frames out of poplar wood i like it because it's nice and easy to work with and it's usually pretty straight i sorted out some of the decent stuff i got this at home depot it's about three dollars a foot for this one by four which is technically three quarter by one three and a half but what i was going to share with you is i just wanted to visualize here what the face frames are going to look like because in the corners they tend to be a little bit narrower because of the way that they meet up but what i'm working on is the countertop's going to cover this i did a little gap back here so i spaced this one here a half an inch so that way since this is a three quarter inch thick it's still going to get covered by this one by a quarter of an inch so the half inch gap is back there and then when the countertop is on you'll never see that gap because it's going to be covered on the top but this way this leaves me with a three and a quarter inch reveal here which all these are going to be three and a half and then this one would be three and a half and i might end up planing this down a quarter inch just so it matches i think that in my situation with being that it's around the corner like that you'll never see that difference right there that quarter inch difference in the reveal so that's why i'm clamping it this way just to kind of get a visual for what it's going to look like and i think that's going to work out good if i put one here in the middle for the center just to see what that looks like there and yeah so i left these half inch end pieces off for now i cut them but i'm gonna paint them beforehand so that's why i figured it'd be easier to at least get most of the painting done with them off so when i'm doing the face frame i have to account for that because i want to flush them up because of the freezer that's going to sit here a lot of times the face frame will hang over a quarter inch or so but i'm going to flush it up with the plywood once it's all done so that's why i'm doing that anyway so i just want to share with you kind of some ideas that you can get a visual you can just kind of clamp the pieces up there get a feel for how they're going to look like and go from there so to figure out how to do this face frame i know math never lies but sometimes there's a little bit of discrepancy in your build and stuff so i like to put things right in place i mean i did a lot of marks here but basically when i did the face frame i don't have it gapped right now but i laid it out as to the half inch gap that i want and then i made a mark three and a half for the width of material and i figured out exactly where center is which this is center but i made my marks here and then i also did the same here but even doing that i actually had to lay it out on the floor and i spaced it since i want to have a half inch gap here to make my face frame look good which i explained earlier i wanted to this say for example this whole thing was 65 and 3 8 for this whole complete measurement and since i'm doing this section first and then these are going to butt into it so i deducted an inch because i'm doing a half inch on this side and a half inch on the other side so that would be 64 and 3 8 but then what i did is i laid it out on the floor and then i laid this out exactly in the center and then i was able to measure in between because this is a little bit unique this is the only centerpiece but i'm still going to run this all the way long i think just so it looks the same because i'm going to run these up past and butt these in between especially for here is where you'd notice it because you don't want to see any end grain here so you're going to run this piece on continuous and the countertop will cover that in grain that's why this one butts into it because you'll never see that end grain so i wanted to keep this the same for the center piece so i had to figure out what my little pieces were in between so they were 26 and 15 16. but it was easiest to do it laying out on the floor which i already took it apart so i can't show you that but just to explain kind of my thought process how i figured it out and then next to figure this end piece out what i did since i don't have the face frame built i clamped this one in tight where it needs to go so this has to be in place and then i clamped the plywood since i left it off for now like i said because i'm going to paint it but this is a just a tad under a half an inch so i want to make sure that is right in place and then i flushed this up right here then i measured in between to see what this piece is going to be and if anything i'm going to actually leave this hang over a 16th of an inch this face frame rather than taking a chance of seeing the plywood i'm going to err on the side of hanging this poplar over just a tad so this face frame so that's kind of my thinking on that so i measured it out and that's how i'm getting those dimensions all right guys i'm working along here in my shed so never mind the mess it's kind of a mess but i wanted to show you a couple different kreg jig options and i would really recommend getting one of these this will make it so much nicer to do this project and you'll be able to use it for a lot of projects in the future i'll include links down in the video description for different ones of these if you want to check them out of course there's different price ranges so this one here is the cheapest one this is the craig mini jig kit and you almost have to have a clamp like this as well which i will link one of these as well so this is a kreg clamp there's different sizes these but the smaller one will work so what you do basically is you just clamp this where you need it to go and there's instructions with it so it comes with that so this next one is the craig r3 jig this is the next step up so it's a little bit nicer it actually has a spot here for the clamp to go into and then it allows you to do two holes instead of just one like this one because you have to do this one and move it over so it comes with a nice little set this one i think you have to buy the bit and stuff separately this one comes with the bit and an allen wrench so this is a nice little one to have i went one step up and got this one this is the k4 master system and i'll show it to you set up here on my workbench so what i did is i actually screwed it down into my workbench just to make it more stable and then it's it's just nice because you can actually put the piece in and clamp it so if it's say for example here i have my three and a quarter inch and you can adjust this for different width of wood so it can do all different kinds and then so it's really secure really stable for you to drill then if you're going to do three to four inch boards you can drill on the outer two holes if you're doing a really narrow one you can use these two and then if you're doing ones that are between two and three inches you can use these two so it shows you that in the book but basically just to show you how that works and then i'll show it to you in action so the next thing is setting up your drill bit which it'll show you that in the instructions as well but it has a handy little gauge here on this system where you can set it up right for three quarter inch there and then you block it down with an allen wrench and then that's what you use to drill in here so if i set this in here then that shows you how much it has to go down i did a little test piece and i recommend if you have any left over do a little test piece so when i was using this jig here i thought that i had problems the other day because i had this right on three-quarter even though i'm using the three-quarter inch material i did a little test piece and it still was just a little bit off so what i found out it seems to work pretty good initially i went between the half and three quarter with this one i went just a little bit shy of the three quarter and then it seemed to work if i went all the way right on three quarter the screws when i put them in right in here on the other side they tended the one to to just bump the wood up a little they didn't poke through quite but they wanted to bump the wood up a little this is just a test piece right here so it's that easy it just goes down in there and then it bottoms out when it gets all the way and that's the perfect depth so then what you can do i don't really have the best way to show this because i'm using short pieces in this example but you can use this clamp and clamp it together and it keeps the joints really nice and even and then it'll tell you on the back of these screws what length that you need for the thickness so i'm using three quarter inch so i need inch and a quarter screws which is what these are and they're also there's fine thread for use with hardwoods there's coarse thread for use with soft and plywoods which the poplar is really soft so that's what i'm using so you can see these so they're the exact length that they need to be so they don't stick through so then all you have to do they give you this really long bit that comes with it so i don't have my tripod i'm not sure if i can show this one-handed but i'm going to try so you just get that started down in there and it just pulls it nice and tight so you do that with both screws so now you can see both screws down in there and you can see if i flip this over look how nice and even that is and then they even have these things they're like a paint grade plug that you can put in there and you can fill these holes right here but they're on the back side of the cabinet face frame so i'm not worried about that but just so you know there is that option so if you do get this one it does tell you which holes to use on the clamp on the drilling system depending on the width and material so three to four inch i was using the two outside holes which is what i was doing for the most part on all these i do have some that are two and three quarters so they're almost three i checked and i just thought these screws were a little bit too close together for the two and three inch one so i ended up drilling them the same with the outside two holes and it seems like it's going to work fine so i was just going to show you here what i was talking about these two because they tell you abc so i've been using a and c on both because this is for my top frame i had to rip these down to two and three quarter these are just the full three and a half right here but so some of these are ripped down for the top of the face frame to two and three quarter but i was still able to use the same placement for the spacing so just want to show you how easy this thing is you can just clamp it in it locks it in for you and so it holds it for you while you're drilling and then you just want to make sure that you put your good side toward this side and the back side you're going to be drilling is the backside which will have stickers and it won't be quite as nice so you have to make sure to keep in mind that the face the nice outside one goes that you're going to see goes on this side for screwing this face frame together i'm just using this guru love wood glue because it's what i have you can use tight bond or whatever i think tight bone and gorilla are both good brands for this so whatever reason the kreg jig seemed to be a little bit off when i did it on test pieces it was fine but when i was doing it on the cabinet it actually poked through so what it was is i did it on the three-quarter setting like they said i don't know if you can see down in here but this was the original two holes and i had enough material i made these two holes and i went halfway between the three quarter and a half on the kreg jig i'll show you an example later but that way the screw would still go in enough so it's not sticking out the head but it was enough left in here that it won't stick out i don't know why it's doing it because these material are all three-quarter they're all the same but that's why i had to do this so i ended up having two on these narrow pieces i had to do these two in the middle so i'm hoping that if i glue it good that will still hold just fine [Music] okay so overall it would have been a lot easier if i had a nice workbench or a 4x8 sheet of plywood to work off of up on a workbench because you could see i had a little trouble with getting it lined up when i was on the floor like that just because of the clamp taking up a couple inches right there so i ended up being able to get it though with a little bit of propping up with some boards and stuff like that but yeah overall i'm really happy how it turned out came out nice and flush overall and even there so took a little finagling but if you have like a workbench or something like that that would be a lot easier where you can hang it out over the edge and clamp it all right guys so i'm just out here sanding on my workbench to try to get this pretty nice so i used a 220 grit i used a sander like this so this is just what i had on hand so that's what i'm using and yeah so you can see 220 grit on that then i also have some here in a hand sander that's 220 that i'm using just to hit the corners a little bit i don't want to get too close in the corners like here for example with the random orbital sander so i'm just hand sanding right in the very corner so just did a nice job and i think it's going to look good i did some research and it seemed like 220 grit is what people say for paint grade cabinets so i think 320 would just be a little too glossy so if you do need to fill some places i recommend this stuff it's dap plastic wood and it is the alcohol-based stuff and it is really good really durable from what i've been told so i don't know if you can see those they look pretty bad in here but this is the spot where the screws stuck through on the craig screws and um so i chipped them out and filled them up so got to wait 15 minutes to sand them it says so you can read the instructions that if you do get that i got all face frames sanded i'm really happy how they came out overall nice and smooth up here is where i had to fill those holes and they came out really nice as well with that dap wood filler all right guys so i'm doing doors now door assembly so i did a little test piece and i recommend if you have any left over do a little test piece i was going to point out these pocket hole paint grate plugs that you can use and the thing is is if you don't have your screw in quite as much they don't go down quite as much so you have more sanding to do so you can leave it that way and sand it off because you put these in and glue them in but the nice thing with these plugs is it saves you a lot of wood filler if you want to use those this is the test piece that i did with the wood fillers and they sand off nice and even you can see like that so i think once they're primed they'll be perfect but right here it made a little bit of a hole so i think i'm just going to go through with wood filler again this is just a scrap piece but that's what i would recommend you guys doing is testing it out on a scrap piece but i think you can just fill these holes with wood filler and then sand them down again and then they should be good my door pieces when i was cutting them the way i figured them so my overall opening was 29 and a half so for height so i went an inch oversized because i want to have it stick over half an inch top and bottom and side to side and i'm going to build the doors like this where the side pieces the long ones upright run past and then the short ones go in between because you're going to see top grain on the door a little bit but you really won't notice it that much because of the countertop and so you want to build them this way at least that's what i want to do so what i like to do also when i'm laying out the door is i like to figure out which is the best side and turn that just on here just like i'm going to build it and then that way i know how i'm going to drill these because i'm going to drill these on the back side the short ones are the only ones that get drilled and then i can assemble them when i'm done pardon my workbench it's dirty but there's stain on it and i can't get it off and this is the only spot i have to work so overall this has been going a lot better than the face frame build with doing it up on the sawhorses like this but the main thing to keep it from splitting i had one that split out a little bit right here is i ended up having to back the screw out when i did that but i'm clamping right over where i'm screwing directly over this and then directly over this end when i screw this in so i haven't had any problems on a second door by doing that so a couple tips that i've learned make sure that your drill is in number one on low so you don't over drive the screws and then just put them in slowly nice and slowly so like this one i put in and i clamp directly over it and then i move the clamp and out here and clamp directly over it make sure you're clamping hard enough and then when i drive the screw i drive it nice and slow and make sure to just snug it don't over tighten it so also i'm using a glue like gorilla wood glue here you can use tight bond as well that's a really good brand i think i mentioned that when i was doing the face frames what i like to do on this if i have three of them together except the last corner you can just lift this up a little bit it has some flex to it and then you can tip it up even if you want you can just add glue make sure that you add enough glue don't do too much or it'll just squeeze out but make sure you got plenty on there even if it squeezes out a little bit won't hurt because you'll just sand it away but you can wipe it when you're all done assembling this but make sure there's enough in there just it'll help make it stronger so i just make sure that that's lined up perfectly on the edge and i usually put this one in first and then this one you can see it pulled tight there when it screw was in just snug sometimes the wood is just a little bit different thickness between the two so make sure to have this clamp cover as far as you can just so it doesn't interfere with you putting the screw in that hole right there if you have it covered in the hole then the head of the screw will hit as it's going in when you're all done doing the doors then you can put these pocket hole plugs in these paint grade ones but then all you do is just put some glue in here a little extra glue is okay and these things are going to stick up a little bit that's okay because you're going to sand that all down once they're dry so a little extra glue won't hurt you can wipe it off if you want makes them look so much better when they're done so i'm back out here in my shed doing some sanding on these doors here and i decided to right after i glued these up the door frames i plugged them with those plugs and glued them in but now doing that before i can route this groove in here this slot for the back panel then i have to sand these down otherwise my router would bump into them so i'm actually using 120 grit diabolo sandpaper that's just what i have and you could even probably use something coarser than that but it takes that right off see these stick up like a 16th or a little more than that that does a really nice job of just taking that right down to smooth so then once i'm all done of course i'll hit it all with 220 when i'm all done but for now i just want to get it down so that i can get it routed so you could wait to do the plugs until after you route if you are going to do the same way that i did so one of the most exciting parts of the build i've been waiting to use this tool i got this cordless router so this is a milwaukee fuel i got this because i already have the milwaukee lineup so i would highly recommend getting one of these a cordless router they're so nice because you don't have any cords to deal with so whatever brand you use whether it's dewalt or milwaukee or makita i think that they are very much worthwhile getting it because you'll use it in a lot of projects down the road hopefully and they really aren't that bad price i think i picked this up for 130 bucks i'll include a link down in the video description where i got mine and you can check out some different options based on what you have i'll probably just link the cordless routers and then you can look at your brand so this is the makita fuel like i was saying i'm so stoked to get it so the other thing that i know that you're going to ask questions about is what for bit to use for this what i'm doing is i'm getting a rabbeting bit this one here in particular is a bosch but you can get different brands the diablo makes a really good one this is what they look like they have a quarter inch shank it's an inch and a quarter total it's a half inch deep but it comes over a half an inch from this bearing right here so this is a half inch this is what i'm looking for and this is what i'm going to use and i set the depth with the plywood that i'm going to use so you can kind of see right there so you can set the depth with the very furthest part that sticks down like this and then i would highly recommend doing a test piece first before you go ahead and do your doors so i'm gonna set a door here for an example this is why i built the doors first and then did this because i knew i was going to be using the router if you don't have the router option you don't want to buy one you don't want to go that route maybe you can borrow one but if you can't i would recommend probably doing on a table saw there's a little trick you can do with cutting the relief on the table saw if you're going to do it the way that i do it anyway so i'm going to do a little bit out of here and inset the plywood basically so it's flush with the back side that's my goal and so that's why i want to show this to you so but if you do do the trick with the table saw you probably want to do this before you assemble it you just want to be careful and not go quite all the way so you want to stop wherever that is that you want to do that and you can just chisel it or something that's what i'm planning to do because the router is going to just take a curve out of this corner otherwise it'll get everything with the corner but i can just chisel and cut out the rest of it square so that's my plan what i'm planning to do there so i wanted to show you that and yes i will link to this exact bit also that i'm using if you want to go this route it is a rabbiting bit and i showed you the dimensions earlier but i will link to try to find that exact one for you so this is why i recommend using a test piece first make sure you get it right i tried this side first and it was just a little bit too shallow so i switched to this side and i got a little scrap of the plywood that i'm going to be using and i got it just there like it's just a tad low if anything but i'd rather have it that way for when i sand it that'll be perfect and yeah so i think this is going to work out really good all right so i'm set up here on my little workbench to do the routing this is the way that i figured out how to do it i'm going to do it on the back side of course and i'm going to clamp it to my workbench like this and just go careful around there and the corner is going to be rounded for now with the router bit and just got to chisel them out later but this should do a really nice job if i go slow and careful okay that was messy but it was a lot of fun so you can see how it turned out overall so this is where i was talking about it follows the radius of the corner there so it leaves a little bit of a round there so you just have to chisel that out straight when you're done or cut it out but man that was a lot of fun so it was messy but i got it all done and here's where you want to be careful i had mentioned earlier about keeping your screws when you screw together keep it away from the edge a little so that's why i did that and then also when you clamp it which i clamp it just so it stays good on my workbench here when you clamp it you want to make sure you leave enough space in here mine has an inch and three quarter here from this to here so i wanted to make sure that it cleared that when i was routing it so it didn't mess me up and it did a good job there so i was able to just clamp it on both sides just on the edge and it held it good i'm really happy how that turned out so i'm just using a chisel that i have here and it's pretty sharp and i was able to get the corner cleaned out very nicely there just kind of take your time i found this was just my personal thing but if i kind of square up with what's there and then line up this way get it scored and then come this way and score it right in the corner and just clean it up a little at a time the nice thing with poplar if you use poplar is it does peel pretty nice i also thought about it as i am chiseling out the corners here that it's easier probably now before i put the back panel in to sand this edge right here so i'm using 220 grit on the hand sander just a little bit and i'm going to sand all this before i glue in the back panel so i'm just gluing these up on the floor i'm using paint cans for weights you can use something just to hold it in place and again i'm using the gorilla wood glue you can use something like this or tight bun 2 or something like that they're both really good glues i believe so i think this is going to work really well just to glue them in i thought about using pins to pin them in as well but i think the glue will hold just fine so when i'm gluing up these door backs i don't like to put too much glue on there i like to put like a nice light bead and it's okay if a little bit squeezes out but then you'll have to flip it over and clean it at least that's what i like to do get it on there get it in place and then squeeze it and then anything that will come out you can get on the front side and clean it before it dries one thing i was a little concerned about was the barcodes on these about getting them off because they're very sticky but i had a friend actually told me this and it works pretty good i had some sandpaper that's 150 grit and you can designate just one for all the stickers if you want on your project and just hit them with sandpaper and go a little bit deeper than what you think you need to and it'll get the residue and everything so yeah got it right off got all the sticky residue and everything so yeah because my concern was if you heat it up with a hair dryer or something to peel it off it might end up driving some of the residue deeper than what it would be so just sanding it like that with a little coarser grit seems to do a really good job so for the doors before i sand them i know i talked about this plastic wood before this dap it's the alcohol-based stuff i got the white color but you can get whatever color because it's going to be painted you can get natural as well but basically where i had sanded plugged and sanded these things you can see there's a little bit of a spot right there where it doesn't get quite perfect so i'm just putting the wood filler on there and then if you want if your gap is a little bigger than what you like on the door you can fill that in i'm not as worried about that but some places where the plywood chipped out a little bit on the back side i am filling that like there is one so just things like that but i especially am watching these plugs filling them a little bit and corners like this corner is a little big so i'll probably fill those so that stuff works really good it hardens in like 15 minutes so you can send it in like a half an hour i think or so but it's really good stuff don't worry if you get a little too much on there because it sands off really easily so the main thing is you want to get extra if anything so i'm just using a little stick of wood here to put it on you can use like a little spatula a little scraper a little knife whatever you want to use like a drywall knife but yeah basically whatever you want and you can do whatever you want like if you want to fill this gap up all the way you can do that i'm going to just sand this and if i want a little bit of a gap there like if if i want it to look uniform then i'll just carve that out with a knife so it looks uniform when i'm done because it's hard to fill a little bit of that without filling the whole gap you know so i think the paint will fill some of that up the paint and primer if it's just a really small gap so for doing the hinges on the doors i wanted to show you guys this little jig from craig jig it is such a handy little jig and it works for putting the hinges in there at the correct depth i'll show you a little scrap piece that i did and i would highly recommend doing a scrap piece just to test it out first so this does the exact size that you need and for this exact hinge it needs to be set back three millimeters so that's how far it allows this to set back right here you can see if i flip the door over what i mean see those things right there they have different thickness that you can do so that's what space is the hinge how far back it goes from the edge right here so that's why that is so what you do is you get clamps and i'm using the actual kreg jig clamps you might be able to make something else work but these are non-marring so they work good for finished surfaces and then they're handy throughout the whole project anyway but so i'm clamping on either side and what i decided to do for spacing down from the top and the bottom is i'm going two and three quarter so it has measurements up here so you can decide what you want to do there that's what i settled on just so it's not too close to the outside edge for splitting and stuff so it does also come with a 1 16th drill bit so you can pre-drill for your screws right there so you want to do that before you take the jig loose so the other thing you want to make sure to not have your drill bit stick down too far because otherwise it could drill down through the face frame of your door so they say to do a 7 8 of an inch and that's what i set this on they say they use like a piece of masking tape so you can see how far to drill but i found it's easy just to put it in the chuck and measure it and make sure that it's no more than a 7 8 because the jig itself is a half an inch that means it goes 3 8 inch into your door frame so that seems to work out pretty good this is the other part that drills the actual hole so it has a bit that comes with it and then this here just locks into this part right here so i'll try to show you in the video a little bit how it works [Applause] so there it's locked in then this part you kind of saw how that works but when you initially set it up it just is made so that it bottoms out right there so it goes against that and stops so that is the perfect depth that you need to get down through that part without going all the way through so it is really pretty easy how it works and that is a very handy jig to have it's about 29 or 30 dollars for this whole complete jig but i think it's well worth the money to get that you can see it's the perfect depth for the hinge to set in and got pre-drilled for the holes right there for the screws and it just does such a nice job so as i'm drilling this i was just gonna say i decided to do three hinges on this door because it is an extra big door and also the hinges that i got they come in a 20 pack so i'm going to need 18 of them so i'm going to put three in there and that way it should be extra strong for little boys hanging on them so like i said on these doors i've been drilling them so i'm two and three quarter inches on this mark right here you can see it has marks on there so for the center what i do is i measure the overall door which is 30 and a half so on half of that 15 and a quarter and i just made a mark in here where i know it's going to get drilled out anyway you can see as a center mark here and here so you can just line it up and that is right on for your center one also you probably saw me in the time lapse but every time i clamp i also pick it up just to make sure that it is seated down all the way tight against those blocks and then i know that it's good just to double check it all right guys well this seems like a really good place to end it for part one i'm going to be doing a part two so be sure to subscribe to my channel and watch out for that this is just a sneak peek of what the cabinet turned out like and it turned out really good really like how it turned out so what be watching out for that next video i may even do a part three where i do the open shelving above it later but for right now it's going to be two parts for this pantry cabinet build itself so yeah keep an eye out for that and hopefully i'll be able to get it done before too long so subscribe i appreciate it give me a thumbs up if you found this helpful and thanks for watching guys

Channel: Smart Easy DIY

Views: 8,645

Keywords: diy cabinet build, diy base pantry cabinet build, diy base cabinet build, build a cabinet, do it yourself cabinet, cabinet diy, food pantry cabinet diy, diy pantry cabinet, do it yourself cabinet build, how to build a base cabinet yourself diy

Id: bH_lQpVTB_Y

Length: 52min 57sec (3177 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021