How to Make Shaker Style Kitchen Base Cabinets

Hey [Music] the cabinet is a standard 34 and 1/2 inches tall and 24 inches deep the 34 and a half inch height is achieved by having a base as three and a half inches tall a bottom plate that's 3/4 of an inch and 30 and 1/4 inch side panels the toe kick sits back three inches from the edge only on the front edge for a standard cabinet but on both the front edge and the exposed edge for an in cabinet the only thing that might change from cabinet in the cabinet is the width these cabinets are 24 inches wide but you can vary the width based on what you need for your space I started making the cabinet's by rough cutting a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood down into a 48 by 30 and 1/2 inch section using a circular saw and a clamping straightedge I took that section to the table saw I turned it down to 30 and 1/4 inches and cut it into two 24 by 30 and 1/4 inch pieces which will be the two sides of my cabinet I also cut out a 24 by 24 inch square which will be the bottom plate of my cabinets we want to do now is come to the back and cut a groove on the back of the cabinet that's 1/4 inch deep and it's about 3/8 wide starting from this inside edge because what that allow us to do is take a sheet of 1/4 inch plywood we'll be able to slide it into the back here and then re flesh with every edge since all three pieces have a depth of 24 inches to make this cut easy I set myself fence to 24 inches and clamped a scrap piece of the 1/4 inch material that I'm using for the back panel to the fence doing this offsets the cut by the thickness of the back panel material so that I get a perfect fit I don't have to worry about measuring the groove goes about 3/8 of an inch into the side of the panel and that's what the blade height is set to I'm not using a dado stack to do this so I made multiple passes moving the fence over slightly in between each cut is build the base underneath what I've done is I've cut three and a half inch strips of plywood and from that I've made the pieces for our base on the underside of the base plate I marked their lines tie back three inches for the toe kick this is an in cabinet so it has a toe kick set back on both the front edge of the cabinet and the edge that will be the exposed end a nan in cabinet would only have the toe kick on the front edge I've drilled several pocket holes in each of the four base pieces so that it can be screwed into the bottom plate of the cabinet and then two holes in each end of the pieces that span the width of the cabinet so I could screw them into the pieces that go front to back I clamp the first piece up against the line using a square block as an assist and screwed it into the base plate I did the same for the other section screwing the base strips together where necessary you might notice that I cut a minor corner for the exposed corner edge of the base but that was unnecessary as there will be a toe kick plate covering that toe kick once the cabinet is installed and that corner won't even actually be visible I just wasn't thinking ahead on the base strip that goes across the back of the cabinet make sure to screw it with the pocket holes on the outside so that the screws angled towards the front of the cabinet if you screw it with the holes angle towards the back the screws will stick through into the groove we cut for the back panel can you guess how I learned that one now it was time to attach the side panels and drilled pocket holes on the side of the panel spaced about four inches apart and put wood glue on the bottom edge and spread it with a glue brush I stood the panel up making sure the grooved side was facing me back and clamped it in place using a block to assist on the back on the front corner I'm using a right angle clamp to hold the panel perpendicular to the base and once it was clamped securely I attached the side panel using pocket screws and then repeated the same thing for the other side normally the pocket holes will be hidden on the outside of the panel but this is an exposed edge of an in cabinet and the trim won't cover those holes so it's better to put them on the inside and plug them which I'll do later in the video next I added four stretchers to strengthen the cabinet and keep it square these were made out of two and a half inch strips of plywood cut to 22 and a half inches to span the inner width of the cabinet each stretcher has two pocket holes in each end the first stretcher is installed down from the top 3/4 of an inch and flush with the edge of the groove we cut so that the back panel on top of it I used a lot of clamps to hold this stretcher in place as it would be really easy for the cabinet to get out of square while installing it the next stretcher is installed on top of the previous one and I drilled countersunk and screwed in two screws to hold these stretchers together I added the third stretcher flush with the top edge of the front of the cabinet the center of the last stretcher is installed 24 inches up from the bottom edge of the base plate so that the doors and drawer face both overlaid the stretcher face and with that installed we've made a box whew so I got to do now is install edge banding tall these exposed plywood edges here and I'm making a nice clean surface that I'll look good on its own but also will be ready for painting I'm gonna be using thirteen sixteenths inch birch edge banding here as birch has a smooth grain that paints well you want to use edge banding that's slightly wider than your plywood so that it overlaps both edges and can easily be trimmed flush to install the edge banding I first standed with 120 grit sandpaper to prepare the edge surface to grip the adhesive on the edge banding and then cut a piece with scissors that's slightly longer than the length of the plywood that I want to attach it to I heated the edge banding by running an iron with no water in it set to the cotton setting down it making sure of the edge banding overlap both edges of the plywood and while that was still warm I used the edge of a wooden block to press it he sit down into the plywood next I trim the excess edge banding using a banding trimmer this trimmer was really nice because it can trim both sides at once but you can also take it apart and do one side at a time if needed I trimmed off most of the excess overhanging the end with scissors and then use one side of the trimmer to cut it flush I recommend starting this cut on one side and then finishing it from the other so that the banding doesn't tear out learn that one the hard way I cleaned up any of the edges that I couldn't reach with the banding trimmer with the utility knife I also trim where the banding crossed the other plywood edges using a speed square and the utility knife I really should abandon the plywood before assembling the cabinet that would have made this way faster and easier I took a 120 grit sandpaper and sanded the banded edges slightly to blend them with the rest of the plywood then you just repeat the same process for all the other plywood edges as a quick note it's a good idea to use a different iron for edge banding than you do for your clothes as you wouldn't want to chance getting the adhesive from the edge banding on your clothes and with that we're done with the edge banding so now we got to add the to these cabinets and then on this end cabinet where this pocket holes are inside here I've gotta fill these pocket holes in with plugs I'm gonna fill the pocket holes first so I can get to these ones from the back before we put that panel on for plugging pocket holes you can buy plugs that look like this or you can buy a plug cutter but that's about $80 and I don't have one and I didn't want to go buy one so what I did is I actually just made my own plugs kind of like this I'm gonna show you how to do that real quick for that get a scrap piece of wood this is just a scrap piece of plywood and I've drilled a normal pocket hole in it and then I've punched out the end there's a hole here then what I can do is I can just clamp it to a work surface and then I have a 3/8 inch wooden dowel that I bought at the store for about a dollar I cut a 25 degree angle on the end here with the miter saw that's pretty close to what the plugs you can buy come with and then what I can do is slide this into the hole push it and then using a flush cut blade on a multi-tool or actually just using a hand flush cut blade I can cut this off then you just take something like an Allen wrench and put it in the hole down here and pop this plug out and look at that we made our own plug you can get another one by taking this dowel back to the miter saw and then cutting a 25 degree angle this way so it matches up with this from there you're basically back to step one you can just repeat as many times as you need for as many plugs as you need it's pretty easy and it was a lot cheaper than buying a plug cutter so it works for me I put some wood glue on the back of a plug and pushed it in I tried to use a plastic hammer to tap the plugs in but I had some trouble with this so I used a flathead screwdriver to drive them in this leaves a little dent in the plug that gets filled in and sand it out later I cut a 23 and 1/4 by 30 and a half inch panel out of 1/4 plywood to fit into the groove we made on the back of the cabinet I put the right angle clamps back on the front of the cabinet to hold it square and laid it down on top of a 2x4 to protect the front edge I put wood glue on the groove and back stretcher and brushed it on then I lay the panel in place making sure to put the good side down towards the inside of the cabinet and shot a bunch of 5/8 inch Brad nails around the edges to hold it in place in cabinet here now it's time to start trimming this out actually make this look good and then cover it is explosive I'm going to edge this down here to do that I'm going to use 1/4 by 2 and 1/4 pieces for both the styles and the rails here I made my own and I'm going to show you quickly how I did that you can buy 1/4 inch stock at the store and then rip at the side if you don't have the tools to do it the way that I did it I rip 2 and 1/4 inch pieces out of a clear pine 1 by 8 and I can get 3 widths of trim from one board and then rip each of those 2 and 1/4 pieces and half width wise leaving each piece about 5/16 of an inch thick I'm using a magnetic feather board to keep the board up against the fence and it's really an invaluable tool for making precise rip cuts I then took the strips marked a bunch of X's on the factory edge so I'd always know that that was the back side no matter what length I cut the trim to and then I planed them down to 1/4 of an inch making sure that the X outside was down so that the sideways saw marks got smoothed out by the planer I cut to 31 inch Stiles out of my trim pieces I did glue to the backside and shot five H and Brad nails to hold them in place making sure that the trim was flushed with both the top edge and the vertical edge of the cabinet once those styles were in place I cut glued and nailed in the rails in between them it's amazing what a difference a little bit of trim can make the cabinet was built but I needed to prepare it for painting I started by sanding the pocket hole plugs flush with the plywood using 150 grit sandpaper on my orbital sander I then filled all the imperfections on the cabinet I used a putty knife to apply a layer of wood filler over the pocket hole plugs and use my finger to fill in the Brad nail holes in the trim once all the filler had dried I sanded everything smooth using 150 grit on my orbital sander prior to painting I came back and sanded all the visible cabinet services with 220 grit it's pretty much done they're just painting it now I gotta make the doors and the drawers for a shaker style door you're not only gonna have a 3/4 inch frame that goes around there's going to be a groove cut on the inside and the panel it's inside that that's actually not what they've been here that would have been a little bit harder to build I wanted to keep this really simple so what I've done is I've taken a piece of plywood I got a trim around the front I put edge banding on it all the way around and I cut out to eleven and thirteen sixteen by twenty three and seven eighths from half-inch plywood my cabinets are 24 inches wide and I want two doors with the 1/16 inch reveal on the outside of each door and a 1/8 inch gap between the doors well it's very thin I also had to account for the thickness of the edge banding which is 1/32 of an inch on both edges of the door adding one sixteenth inch total to each doors width for the door height I needed them to be 1/16 of an inch less than the 24 inch center line on the front stretcher - the 1/16 total width of the edge banding the process to add the trim to the doors is just like adding the trim to the side of the end cabinet except for one thing when shooting Brad's into the Stiles I had to be aware of where the door hinge holes were going to be drilled on the back of the door and make sure not to put any Brad's in that area once all the trim was attached ironed on and trim the edge banding around the door edge I saved a bit of time by using my belt sander to smooth the rough edges instead of doing it by hand it took a little bit of practice to send off just the right amount but this really sped things up I filled and sanded all the brad holes in the trim seams just like before using 150 grit sandpaper and then coming back and sanding the whole door with 220 grit then I repeated the process and made a whole bunch of doors I needed to drill holes for the hinges but this is my first time using these hinges so I made a test door out of scrap plywood and once I was confident in my offsets I clamped a hint old jig send during the whole three and a half inches from the edge of the door and drilled out the hinge hole I then drill two holes for the hinge screws using painters tape as a depth indicator on my drill bit did the same for the other door hinge we've got ourselves a completed door majora faces to this drawer face is made pretty much just like the door the only difference is the rails here are thinner than the styles are there a rule that I found is that if the drawer faces 7 inches or less in height then you want to make the rails thinner and I made my real one and 5/8 inch thick if your face is 5 inches or less then you want to make a solid slab I mean my cabinet drawers entirely out of maple plywood so that they wouldn't need to be painted the cabinet door opening is 5 and 7/8 by 22 and a half wide and in general I made drawers an inch shorter than that drawer opening so this is 4 and 7/8 tall the drawer slides for the cabinet also need 1/2 an inch each so whether the drawer is 21 and a half inches the front and back pieces of the drawer are 20 inches wide and they're screwed into these two 22 inch long side pieces using pocket holes that are hidden by the back of the cabinet and by the drawer front the side pieces also cover the edges of the front and back plywood so that the only edge banding that needs to be done is the top edge there's a piece of 1/4 inch maple plywood that slotted in to the bottom edge of all the drawer pieces all right let's make a drawer I ripped a bunch of five-inch wide boards out of 3/4 inch maple plywood and later recut them to 4 and 7/8 inches when they were manageable strips ripping in the longer direction of the plywood is more difficult but it makes the grain pattern run in the direction than a real maple board would I also cut the boards off screen to the right length on my miter saw I got help from my assistant Brady as I don't yet have an feeder outfeed tables to do this by myself to out a groove for the bottom panel I set my table saw blade height to 1/4 of an inch using a scrap piece of my trim as a guide and then I cut a slot 3/8 of an inch up from the edge in all 4 drawer pieces and then mark where the top edge of the drawer bottom would be relative to that first cut and cut that out on all the drawer slides I later made one more pass through all the drawer pieces through the middle of those two cuts just to clean out the remaining wood that's in that groove I drilled three pocket holes in the ends of the outside front and back drawer pieces and then put maple edge banding on the top edge of all four pieces the drawer bottom must cut out of 1/4 inch maple plywood 3/8 longer and wider than the inner dimensions of the drawer box to assemble the drawer I put a few drops of wood glue and each of the grooves just to keep the bottom panel from moving around and ruff fit all the pieces together and then clamp both sides in place and screwed the whole thing together with pocket screws and just like that we've made a drawer I started by priming all the doors and drawer faces I used a brush to get into all the corners and then came back with the foam roller to leave an even finish on everything once I was finished priming the doors I did the same for the inside and outside of the cabinet after the primer dried I lightly sanded everything with 320 grit sandpaper to get rid of any of the rough spots and then put the first coat of paint on everything using a blue for the doors and outside of the cabinets and white for the insides I use semi-gloss alkyd paint for the cabinets it takes longer to dry and much longer to cure than latex paint but it cures to a very hard surface that should be significantly more durable making a great choice for cabinets painting everything using a brush and roller was very tedious particularly the doors I'm definitely going to be trying out a sprayer to speed this up in the future once the inside had dried I taped off the cabinets and painted the face frame blue and later added a second coat of paint to everything and I was done painting to mount the drawer I first took out the inner slide that attaches to the drawer and set that aside I clamped a drawer slide jig to hold the slides in place while mounting them the cabinet stretcher gets in the way of the jig here so I attached a scrap piece of plywood to the jig using double sided tape to make it match the stretcher height I put the slide flush with the front of the cabinet and marked the long horizontal slots I punched the Centers of the mark slots with a spring-loaded Center punch and pre-drilled the screw holes I screwed in the slide starting at the back making sure that the slide was flush with the front before putting the other three screws and I repeated for the slide on the other side looking good next I needed to attach the inner slides that I pulled out earlier to the sides of the drawer I set the slide on some of my 1/4 inch trim so that the drawer would sit just a little bit above the stretcher when it was installed maximizing drawer clearance this slide is installed just like the outer slide marked the holes punch and pre-drill them and screw in the slide keeping it flush with the front of the drawer to install the door I screwed the hinges to the door and then attach the mounting plates to the hinges and then held the door in place flush with the bottom edge of the cabinet and the center of the mounting plates the height of these marks are accurate but the offset from the front of the cabinet might not be so I made a template that has a slot cut for the middle of the hinge and two holes 37 millimeters back from the front edge I put the template up flush with the cabinet front so I could see the mark I made in the center of the slot and Mark the two screw holes then I punched the marks pre-drilled and screwed in the mounting plate I'm sensing a theme here I did the same for the other hinge attach the door to the mounting plate and then installed the other door the same way these hinges can adjust in three directions and I set them in line with the cabinet edges and used a scrap piece of 1/8 poly carbonate to get the spacing between the doors right i slotted the drawer into the slides I put some double-sided tape on the front of the drawer put my 1/8 spacer on top of the doors and lined up the drawer front before pushing it all together so the tape would hold it in place i pre-drilled countersunk and drove in to one inch screws flush with the back of the drawer to hold the drawer front and place permanently the pools I use to have mounting holes three inches on Center apart so I used a template to mark a centerline it at four inches from the top of the door so that the top screw hole of the door pool would be two and a half inches from the top of the door I set my door hole jig so that the holes would be drilled in the middle of my trim and put the centerline of the jig on my mark I clamped it in place and drilled out the holes using my template as a backing plate to prevent blowout and screwed on the door pool installing the drawer pool is pretty similar I mark the center of the drawer and then used a little piece of trim to both extend the center line and to be a spacer under the jig I set the depth of the jig halfway down the drawer face drilled out the holes and screwed on the pool the conversation - be sure to subscribe so you won't miss any of my kitchen remodel or all the things that we'll be making in the future thanks for watching I'll see you all next time

Channel: Project Billd

Views: 127,981

Rating: 4.9054008 out of 5

Keywords: how to build cabinets, how to make cabinets, build a cabinet, how to make cabinet doors, how to make a drawer, install cabinet pulls, edge banding, how to install edge banding, shaker style, shaker doors, kitchen remodel, diy, do it yourself, how to, build, make, project billd

Id: 5Z-jH2ahEJE

Length: 18min 45sec (1125 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ronocnikral]

Nice! you need a cross cut sled. When you were cutting some cross cuts i flashed back to a kick back i had. A lot of these lessons are learned the hard way...that's one i wish i would have just built the stupid sled from the get go.

Would the stile on the side cover the pocket holes and save you the time of filling the pocket holes on the inside?

[u/kingdeuceoff]

These look great. The only thing I really would be wary of is edge banding in the doors and drawers front. Seems like a point of failure but time will tell and you have the skill needed to make new doors if needed.