How to Build Basic Cabinets--Using ONLY PLYWOOD!

hey guys it's sheryl from woodshop diaries and today i want to show you how i built my shop cabinets actually i made a video about how to build cabinets like three years ago when i built my kitchen cabinets when we moved into our new house i kind of missed my old kitchen i thought you know i could just build a mini old kitchen in my shop so that's what i did and i'm going to show you how they all came together and how easy it is to just build some basic cabinets in this video so if you're ready to get building let's go after unpacking most of my stuff in the new shop i still had some paints spare parts and just some odds and end items with nowhere to go so i decided to build out this back wall and add two tall pantry style cabinets on each side and some basic base cabinets under the window with a space in the middle to add a little desk area i built my previous kitchen cabinets this exact same way so if you're looking to add cabinets to your shop your kitchen or just to make a built-in this is a simple way to go about it using only plywood i built everything here using purebond three-quarter inch birch plywood except for the doors on the base cabinets that were purebond three-quarter inch hickory plywood panels i'll link the details plans tools and products for this project in the description below but for now here's the breakdown of how everything came together i had purchased a stack of plywood for this and some other upcoming projects so the first thing i did was start cutting everything down into more manageable pieces i used my kreg rip cut and circular saw to rip three sheets into 23 and three-quarter inch wide strips for the pantry cabinets by the way i will link a detailed guide for how i cut down my plywood sheets in the description below and then i ripped three more sheets into 22 and three-quarter inch wide strips for the base cabinets this gave me six strips and i could use one to make each base cabinet for a total of six cabinets i kept the leftover strips to use as support pieces you'll notice that i made the pantry cabinets a little deeper than the base cabinets so they'll be the same depth as the countertop running between them when i add that at the end then i ripped one more sheet right down the center to give me two 24 inch wide pieces that i can use for the pantry doors later i labeled all of these pieces and then began assembling the pantry cabinets first to keep things simple i just made the pantry cabinets a full eight foot tall so i didn't have to trim the sides i did however use my craig accucut and circular saw to cut six 22 and three quarter inch long pieces from the plywood strips that i cut for the pantry cabinets earlier i'll use three for each pantry one at the top one at the bottom and one in the middle now you've probably seen people build and install cabinets and use like a two by four base to set them on instead of making a toe kick and that's a great way of doing things but i usually just cut the toe kick if you don't know what i mean when i say toe kick it's this little recess section underneath the cabinets that allows your feet a place to go into i guess so you can stand closer to the cabinets honestly i don't really know what the thought process was behind the invention of the toe kick but it's on most cabinets i'm not sure if there are quote unquote standards for toe kick dimensions but when you build things yourself you can kind of do what you want so i usually cut mine about three and a half inches tall and about four inches deep i just marked these out on the front bottom corner of my pantry sides and cut them out with a jigsaw now i was making all of these cabinets frameless so the front edges of the plywood cabinet boxes will be exposed in the end result so before moving on i went ahead and applied edge banding to the front edges of each piece of the cabinet i'll link a detailed guide on applying edge banding in the video description before assembling i needed to cut two small plywood strips to use to secure the pantry cabinet to the wall for this i just cut these from the leftover strips of plywood from the beginning of the video next i pulled out my kreg jig to drill pocket holes to assemble this cabinet i drilled three quarter inch pocket holes into the ends of each of the shelves and the two support strips and then i assembled using one and a quarter inch pocket hole screws you can use glue here as well if you wanted i attach the bottom panel three and a half inches from the bottom edge of the sides the top flush along the top edge and the middle piece exactly in the middle of the cabinet i like to add a middle shelf piece in really tall cabinets like this just to help keep the sides from bowing in the center [Music] i installed the two support strips like shown here one directly below the top and one directly below the middle shelf [Music] so this cabinet right here is going in that corner i don't want to butt the edge of the cabinet straight up to the wall because i will be running baseboard along the bottom the baseboard is just a 1x6 so it's three-quarter inches thick and so when it butts up to this cabinet if this was directly against the wall it would like hit the door i've got these scrap three-quarter inch pieces i'm just going to glue this onto here so i can butt this up to the wall and then my baseboard will hit it instead of hitting the actual cabinet once the first pantry cabinet was assembled i glued a scrap spacer strip onto the side to leave room to add my baseboards later then i cut a piece of quarter inch plywood to staple onto the back here once the glue was dry on the spacer blocks i drug it over to where it was going and secured it to the wall i used a level and a couple of shims to set the cabinet so that it was straight and square then used a few screws through the support strips in the top and the middle of the cabinet to secure it to the wall studs i repeated this entire process for the second pantry for the other side of the cabinets now before we move on to the base cabinets i want to take a minute to share about our video sponsor craig academy now you guys know that i love craig and you have and will see me using several of their tools jigs and guides in this cabinet building process but besides the fact that they make cabinet and furniture building easier with their tools they also provide so many helpful resources to inspire educate and encourage people from every skill level to get building craig recently launched a new online learning platform called craig academy this platform offers premium project plans expert led video courses and over 40 skills videos breaking down basic foundational information that you can use in every project that you build while you're over there you may even see a few familiar faces in some of those videos if you want to learn more about craig academy i will leave a link to check it out in the video description in the meantime let's get back to work i built all of my base cabinets here the exact same size i was using 24 inch wide pieces of hickory plywood for the doors and they were full overlay doors now usually when i make full overlay doors i take the overall width of the cabinet and subtract a quarter inch so if i made my cabinets 24 and a quarter inches wide i wouldn't have to cut my doors any narrower so that's what i did here but if you need a different size cabinet than 24 and a quarter inches wide obviously you can modify the sizing pretty easily from each plywood strip i cut two pieces 34 and a half for the sides one 22 and three quarter for the bottom and then i kept the little leftover strip to use as a support piece later i did this for all six base cabinet boxes and also cut the toe kicks in the front bottom corners just like i did on the pantry sides earlier in addition to the one support piece left after cutting each plywood strip i also cut two more for each cabinet box the same length two will go on the top and one at the back you'll see that in a minute once i had all of my pieces for the cabinet cut down i drilled pocket holes into the ends of the bottom panels and all three support strips and just like the pantry i applied edge banding along the front edges of everything that will be exposed which is one of the support strips the bottom panel and the two sides after everything was sanded well i began assembling these base cabinets using pocket hole screws for these base cabinets i installed the bottom panel three and a half inches from the bottom edge so that it's even with the toe kick cut out then i installed the edge banded support strip at the top in the front and the two others are at the back corner the strips at the top will be used to secure the countertop and the one at the back will be used to screw the cabinet to the wall after all the boxes were together i cut quarter inch plywood back panels to staple onto each one you could definitely route out a rabbet to set these into if you wanted but you won't be seeing the sides of any of these cabinets so i didn't really bother with it i just stabled them in place i always like to check that my back panels are square and then adjust my cabinet boxes to match when i staple them on that way i can make sure my cabinet box is square now sometimes i do things out of order and this is just one of those times i had both tall pantry cabinets installed to the wall and i was trying to get all the base cabinets installed before the end of the day here but i was waiting on drawer slides and i didn't want to put the back on the drawer cabinets until i had the slides in long story short i just went ahead and screwed four of the base cabinets in place two on each side and i just came back later to deal with the drawer cabinets i screwed the two base cabinets together first and then i used a level and some shims to get them level and square before securing them to the wall studs through the back support this concrete floor was really unlevel but most of them are i guess so i just did the best that i could i was planning to paint the two tall cabinets gray so while i was waiting on the drawer slides to come in i just went ahead and cut the doors to length and prepped them and the cabinets for paint you guys know how much i hate painting so literally this is the only footage that i got of it i primed and painted the cabinets and the doors and i wasn't super careful because i was planning to cover the back wall later so please don't judge my terrible paint job i used some kills 3 primer and just some basic latex paint nothing fancy for these one thing i love about building cabinets from purebond hardwood ply is that it's already smooth and since it's just raw wood it takes paint really well and it sticks good i know it's easy to overthink painting cabinets but if you just use a good primer and a decent paint on plywood you'll be fine but if you want some extra tips i do have a detailed guide to finishing raw wood furniture that i will link in the description below anyway while the paint was drying the drawer slides came in so i could get back to the fun stuff building i used 22 inch drawer slides on the bottom two drawers and 16 inch slides on the top drawer i actually ordered six pair of 22 inch slides to use on all the drawers but i realized later that the top drawer would hit the back support piece if i use the 22 inch slide on it i keep a stock of 16 inch slides in my tool chest so i just swapped these out for the top drawers i don't have a fancy reason for why i use 16 inch except that i just happen to have some handy so i installed these into the two drawer cabinets and added the back panel then i secured these in place on the wall if you're interested in learning more about how to measure for and install drawer slides i have a really detailed guide that i'll link in the description speaking of drawers once these cabinets were installed i pulled out another sheet of plywood to start cutting down for the drawer boxes i ripped a few strips 10 inches wide for the deeper bottom drawers and 4 inches wide for the shallow top drawers then i cut these to length on the miter saw you can build drawers a million ways but i usually cut dados in mine to install quarter inch plywood bottoms into i cut these dados on the table saw just using a regular blade and adjusting the rip fence to make multiple passes until i had a cut a quarter inch wide you can find all the specifics plus some helpful tips for drawer building in the guide that i linked in the description then i drilled pocket holes into the ends of the front and back pieces of the drawer boxes so i drilled all of these and realized that i drilled them into the wrong board so these are actually the sides of the drawers so the slides will mount right here so i may be able to cover up one of the pocket holes or like two with the slide but i'm still gonna see these pocket holes and if this was a furniture piece i would re-cut all these but since this is from the shop i'm just gonna leave them maybe measure before you drill your pocket holes and make sure you're drilling them into the front and the back pieces of the drawer and not the side pieces once the pocket holes were drilled i assembled each drawer box using pocket hole screws adding a quarter inch plywood bottom into the dados i installed these into the cabinets using some scrap wood spacer blocks to evenly space them out again that's all covered in detail in the guide linked below once the drawers were installed i went back and drilled shelf pin holes to be able to install the shelves in the rest of the cabinets i use my craig shelf pin jig to drill these holes and could i have drilled these earlier in the building process yes should i have probably but as long as they were added at some point it's not that big of a deal i drilled holes along each side of the cabinets where i might want to add shelves later and then i could finish things up here by adding the doors now i had already cut and painted the doors for the pantry but for these base cabinets i used some two foot by four foot hickory plywood panels i took them out of the box and kind of arranged them the way that i wanted then i cut them to the right heights to fit the cabinets [Music] i only had to cut the length here since i made these cabinets to fit the width already now typically with drawer fronts you run the grain horizontally but in this case i ran it vertically so for my drawer fronts i cut the panel to the same height as i cut the rest of the doors then i just measured and marked out the drawer fronts and cut those so that way when they go in place the grain matches and it all runs vertically to match the doors i just thought this was a neat design element you can run the grain and cut them however you wish i edge banded all of these doors and drawer fronts and full disclosure i ran out of hickory edge banding and couldn't find anymore so i just used birch edge banding the color actually wasn't that far off once everything was edge banded and sanded well i used a kreg concealed hinge jig to drill holes for the concealed hinges in all the doors i made these doors full overlay so i used full overlay hinges for frameless cabinets to install them into each cabinet i have a separate video and a step-by-step tutorial for how to install and adjust these that i'll link in the description i screwed all four hickory doors into the cabinets then worked on the drawer fronts i positioned the fronts onto the drawers and just used some screws from the inside to secure them i left just enough room between them so they wouldn't rub and i centered them side to side for the large pantry doors i used three hinges instead of just two since they are a little heavy however since the shelf was in the center of the cabinet i made sure to place the middle hinge slightly off center so that it wouldn't interfere i used my foot to hold the door up while i screwed the hinges into the cabinet and for safety reasons i'm not showing screwing in the top hinge because i used a swivel chair to reach it but once all three hinges were screwed in i adjusted as needed for the door to open and close easily one of the last pieces is adding the toe kick boards i just cut some three and a half inch wide plywood strips for this but you could also use one by fours if you wanted i just cut these to length and nailed them in place along the front of the bottom of the cabinet i used one solid piece across the three base cabinets on each side but since the pantry cabinets were one inch deeper i cut a separate piece for them now the last piece of this entire cabinet build was the countertop you can use whatever you want for your countertop but i cut another sheet of plywood into two 24 inch wide strips since this is obviously longer than eight foot i'm gonna have to piece this together now if i just like divided it two the scene would be here in the center and that would be fine if i wanted to put a support piece underneath here but i don't really want to do that also this is gonna be like where i would put my desk up to and so i really wouldn't want the seam right there just in case it was like a little uneven or whatever so i'm going to put my eight foot long piece i'm gonna center it here and then i'm gonna cut two pieces to fit on each side of it i edge banded and installed the middle eight foot piece first i got it fairly centered on the base cabinets and used some one and a quarter inch screws through the top supports in each cabinet to secure it i put screws in both the front and the back supports then i measured and cut two shorter sides to finish up the countertop before giving the base cabinets a few coats of poly i went back and cut a couple pieces to put along the bottom of the inside of the cabinets because i had to shim these up so much from the unlevel floor the gap was just kind of ugly so i just put a piece here to hide it i gave the cabinet doors a few coats of poly on both the inside and the outside then installed some modern black hardware and they were ready to fill up full disclosure i need to sit down and decide how i want to organize these so i only added a shelf in one cabinet so far but that's the beauty of shelf pins i can install them later whenever i want so for now i just shove my unpacked boxes in here and i'll situate it all as i go i'm so excited to have this project complete and i just love how much storage and function that it adds to my workspace i'm really glad to have some cabinets to keep some of my stuff free from dust and to keep my workspace just less visually cluttered i've got some ideas for the rest of this wall but i'm still contemplating what exactly i want to do with it so stay tuned to see if i ever make up my mind i hope you guys enjoyed this video and this project and if you can't wait to see what's next be sure to subscribe if you aren't already thanks so much for watching friends and until next time happy building

Channel: Shara Woodshop Diaries

Views: 1,287,805

Keywords: #KregAcademy, #BuildSomethingWithKreg, basic cabinets, how to build basic cabinets, workshop cabinets, building workshop cabinets, workshop cabinets plywood, plywood cabinets for garage, how to build base cabinet, how to build pantry cabinet, how to build a simple pantry cabinet, how to build plywood cabinets, easy cabinet building, easy diy kitchen cabinet, plywood kitchen cabinets diy, diy workshop storage cabinets, woodshop cabinet plans, diy garage cabinets with desk

Id: j-VEsdM1rdw

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 20 2021