Kreg Kitchen Makeover Series Part 1: How To Create New Cabinet Doors

[Music] hi i'm gary stringer in the 40-plus years I've been making my living in the construction business a lot of stuffs changed but one thing hasn't changed kitchen remodeling is incredible demand and that's because everybody loves the kitchen it's the center of family life and the sir of entertaining now there's a lot of tips and techniques I've learned those 40 years that I want to share with you in this video but there's also some great tools that make my job a lot easier and they're made by Craig Tool Company they're simple to use tools that are going to let you get the same results as a professional now we're going to make some functional upgrades to this kitchen and also some cosmetic upgrades you're going to be amazed at just the difference that we can have in this kitchen one thing we have to be certain of though is are you happy with the location of like the refrigerator the range and the sink if you're good to go on those then you can do all kinds of remodeling yourself on a kitchen and make a dramatic difference in the way that your kitchen looks but the first thing we've got to do is we've got to get rid of these old outdated doors and get these countertops off and then we can get down to doing some really fun stuff probably the biggest thing I can do and I'm remodeling a kitchen to have a dramatic impact is build new doors and drawer fronts when I first started in the construction business building doors scared me to death thankfully I don't have to be afraid of it all anymore because there's a super simple way that I can do it using the strength and the speed of the Craig joint so this is the door that we're going to build and I think it's a great looking door this is a style that's extremely popular and it's going to be timeless we call it a square corner shaker door and it's really just several parts now this part the vertical parts are called the styles the parts that run this direction are called the rails now if you start to get confused you can just think about the rails on a railroad track run horizontally the vertical parts of the styles the horizontal part is the rail then we have a plywood panel that sits in between this is what the back of the door looks like then we've got a really strong butt joint that we use the micro screws for because they're going to be a little bit easier to fill those holes later on but we just rebate down the thickness of the plywood drop the plywood panel in and then we'll finish up by just taking a thin strip of wood to cover that that's going to hold it in place the first thing that I have to do when I get ready to build doors is create a cut list before I can create a cut list I need to decide what type of hinge isn't going to use for this job and pretty much every job that I do we use hinges that allow the door to overlap a half an inch so what that means is it's going to overlap half inch all the way around I go to the cabinet I just stick my tape measure in place measure the width and the height and add one inch to the height and one inch to the width and it's going to overlap a half inch everywhere then now doing the math to figure out how to get exactly the right width can be a little bit tricky but there's a way of doing it that is super easy all you do is take two of your styles for the cabinet and let's say that I'm going to make a 12 inch wide door here I take my tape measure and I hold 12 inches right on this side then I just read over here what this length is pretty simple as long as you do it that way you'll never make a mistake so I go in measure the size of the doors and then create a cut list once I've got a cut list you just want to go to a saw and cut all the pieces when that's done you're ready to move to the next step which is drilling now I'm down to one of the fun parts that's building these door frames now I do like to use a little bit of glue on these joints some people will tell you that that doesn't really add any strength because it's ingrained but I've made a mistake in the past and had to take one of these apart and I can guarantee that that glue does add strength the clamp makes it so easy because it just pushes the material down flat against that surface and all I have to worry about is driving the screw I am making sure that I keep this in lined up and if it happens not to line up perfect I can just take my hammer and tap it a little bit one of the things that I really love about this system of building things with wood as that as soon as I drive the screw I'm done I don't have to wait on the glue to dry because the screw really is the clamp now when I turn this over you're going to be amazed at what great joints I've got I've done thousands and thousands of these but you're going to find that using this clamp you're going to get exactly the same kind of great results this is a nice flat joint and it's really a strong joint now that's one door frame down I've only got about 23 24 more to do now I'm ready to rebait the insides of the frames to accept that quarter-inch plywood now some of you've probably never used a router bit before but let me tell you it's really an easy process and that's because the bearing actually guides the cut the only thing that you have to remember is make sure that the bit is totally away from the work when you start up the motor once you get started just ease the bit in against the wood the bearings going to come in contact with the edge of the wood and then you just want to go around the inside of the frame and a clockwise motion the other thing that's important is just make sure that the base of the router is sitting down flat on the wood other than that it's really really simple you're going to be amazed at how easy it is and the great results that you're going to have and you'll probably looking for other things to do with your router after that [Music] so now I'm ready to actually cut those plywood panels this is the back of one of our doors I'm going to just take a measurement here to the back of the rebates so this is about six and eleven sixteenths I want to make sure I give myself at least a sixteenth of an inch room it doesn't have to be that tight of a fit so I'm probably going to rip it to six and a shot five-eighths now to do that I'm going to use this Craig Rybka which is an attachment that goes on any search saw that I've ever seen this is a piece of quarter-inch plywood that we got at the Home Center now here's a little bit of a tip they're more than happy to cut it into a four by four peaceful and that's a whole lot easier to haul around and to handle than a four by eight sheet I'm going to be cutting on top of this thick piece of foam and that's going to do several things for me one its sacrificial so I don't have to worry about cutting into my work support underneath - it does a great job of keeping this piece of plywood from moving so I'm not too worried about that and then the last thing is it's rigid enough that actually supports the work so all I have to concentrate on is making a straight cut you now we've got several doors of the same size so I'll make at least one more rip like this actually I think I need to make two more one of the nice things about this rip cut is its repeatable once I set this width I can just keep on ripping I'm gonna get exactly the same piece every time so I've got my plywood ripped to fit into the doorframe that means that it's going to fit like this but now I need to make this other cut which would be called a crosscut now when you're ripping which means going with the grain that's a pretty forgiving cut but now that I'm getting ready to crosscut I need to be a little bit more careful and when I actually turn the best face of the plywood down so that there's any tear-out it'll happen on the back side and another thing you probably want to consider is you're going to want to blade this a little better than the one that just came with the saw so go down to your home center and invest a little bit better blade one that you're going to pay maybe eighteen to twenty eight dollars for and usually a higher tooth count means it's going to cut better before I put my plywood panel in I want to go ahead and plug these micro jig holes here's the little plug I'm going to be using and I always put a good bit of glue in there and they'll just slide right in you want to stop them when they're just flush with the surface and then LEM sit for 10 15 minutes before you sand these our paint grade plugs but if I was doing stain grade work they also make all different types of plugs and there's even a kit where you can use the exact same lumber that you're making your door frame at them to make them perfectly match plug okay now that I've got these holes plugged I'm going to go back to the first ones I plugged and take my sander and start to sand the back now because this is paint grade I can use a pretty aggressive sandpaper 100 grit maybe even 80 as long as it just feels pretty smooth to the touch the one thing I always tried to be certain of is after I've sanded something I like to just run my hand over what I've sanded and if I can't feel anything that means when it's painted it's going to be great but if I can feel something the paint is really going to magnify that so it needs to feel smooth to the touch if you want to really look slick when you paint it I just finished sanding all these frames if you take a look the plugs did a great job once this is painted you won't even know that those are there the router bit leaves a rounded over corner so I was just over at the miter saw taking care of that here's how I did it I took this piece of plywood to the miter saw and I just clip each of the corners on a 45 I was going to fit in here just about perfectly doesn't have to be totally tight because we're going to put a little piece of flat molding over the top of that to cover it what I want to do right now is just put it in place and I'm going to just take a short fastener and about five or six places pin the corners and pin the middle of this I'm going to be using a little staple gun and these are about half-inch to 7/16 staples but you could use any kind of fastener you know if what she owns an 18 gauge brad nailer just use a short brad now doesn't really matter the main thing is just pin them to hold them in place now on a wider door and what I would pin the ends but this is a fairly narrow door so I just hit it six times now the plot was pretty well pushed in place we'll set this aside and nail the rest of the panels in and then we'll be ready for the next step which is going to be drilling for our European hinges in the back there's really only two ways that anyone would drill this hole the first would be with a drill press which is a pretty big powerful piece of equipment and you have to make sure that you get everything lined up then you have to clamp this door down where you sure don't want to let it movie because if it moves at all one it could ruin the door and two it could really hurt you also a drill press really isn't a very portable piece of equipment so I'd much rather use this which is the Krag concealed hinge gig this is the base plate of the jig and the way it works there's a couple tabs on the back they're going to index off the edge of the door and they have variations for the amount that you need to index back in and out and then along the edge there's March the same from each end so that I can come from either in the door and get the same setting now we this three inches from the end so let's just see how this jig works so I'm going to start out by laying the jig right on the edge of the door and I just move it over until I've got my three inches on the top edge just want to clamp both sides then this is the guide that does all the work for me it's going to guide the bit down it's even got to stop so they'll control the depth that I want to drill it just drops in like this that twist I drill the hole and pop it out and then I'm going to take this sixteenth an inch drill bit and drill two pilot holes there's a little guide right there and I've got this bit set a little bit shallower because I don't want to drill all the way through the front of the door those pilot holes are really important because when I put that hinge there they tell me exactly the alignment if I didn't have those pilot holes in that base plate where to get skewed a little bit one direction the other the hinge just doesn't work very well so those two little pilot holes just make it a flawless application now I'm going to just move to the other end and do the same process now the hinge just slides in there like that and I've got to do is I just twist it until I see those pilot holes right there drive the screws in takes all the guesswork out of it so here's my first finished door the earlier I was talking about the molding I was going to put on the back to hold the panel in place and this is it just a little flat piece I didn't even miter the corners because on the back it's just a square butts really really simple let me show you how I put that molding on there I set some stops up on my miter saw so I could make repetitive cuts so it went really easy I'm going to start out with this long piece for a side now this multi mark is so handy for this because once I get it set up I can do the same thing over and over again on all the doors without having to take my tape measure my pencil out I'm just going to gauge over and it's the same distance from the end and the edge once I double-check myself I'm just going to put a one-inch 18 gauge brad in come down to the other end I'm going to check it one time in the middle now next I'm gonna put the two end pieces on I just line that up use my gauge again I'm going to actually pin this one corner of the long piece so I've got it lined up and then I want to come down to the other end and put this piece in place I'm lining that corner up and then all I have to do is just line those other two corners up the last time when we use the multi markers just to make sure this is good and straight you know in case I had a piece that was bowed a little bit now it's just as simple as that and the part that I really like about it is once I get things set up I can use that multi mark and it's just really straightforward I'm getting great reveals all the way around and we're finishing off a beautiful door I really enjoyed the process of making these doors and I'm so proud of the way that they turned out but now I'm really getting ready to enjoy actually put them in place and see how they look on the cabinets [Music] now another great thing about building the new doors is we got to upgrade the cabins to this soft closed feature that looks incredible it really gets me excited about going ahead and getting all the rest of the doors in place

Channel: Kreg Tool

Views: 1,896,727

Keywords: diy kitchen cabinets, diy kitchen makeover, kitchen makeover on a budget, reface kitchen cabinets, build kitchen cabinet drawer doors, diy cabinet doors for kitchen, kitchen renovation diy, kreg tools, kreg pocket hole jig, kreg jig, kreg kitchen makeover

Id: NVTDNfsu50U

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2016