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Drawer construction (kitchen cabinet quality exposed!)

Monday, May 9th, 2011

Check out this joint

It’s easy to get star-struck by glamorous kitchen cabinets while overlooking their construction quality. Want to know the hidden secrets of cabinet craftsmanship? It’s in the joints. Drawer joint construction usually indicates the overall quality of  kitchen cabinets. As with the human body, if the joints are weak, a pretty face means little over time.

There are three major types of Drawer construction. drawer joints– butt-jointed; rabbeted and/or dadoed; and dove-tailed. The comparative strength of the three major drawer joint types is obvious if you imagine this: Challenge someone to pull your arms apart with your hands in one of three positions–palms together, fingers straight up; palms in opposite directions, opposing fingertips clutched; or palms together, fingers intertwined and bent. The greater the overlay, the stronger the resistance, right? Cabinet drawer construction is similar:

Butt-jointed: In less expensive drawer construction, boxes will have particle board or plywood sides with corners that butt flat against each other. They’ll be stapled or nailed together. The drawer bottom may also be butted flat underneath the box sides and stapled or nailed to them. Better box bottoms slide into a groove on the insides of the drawer box.

Nailed Butt Joint

Nailed Butt Joint

Rabbeted and/or dadoed: A  rabbet is a notch, cut along the end of a board to receive another board. A dado cut is groovy, man! It is a recess cut along a board to receive a perpendicular board. While stronger than butt joints because they can be glued or fastened along two or three sides, the lip of the rabbet or dado cut can eventually weaken and snap off.

Rabbet Joint

Rabbet Joint

Dove tailed: No, it doesn’t fly! Dovetail joints usually indicate solid hardwood drawer boxes. Both ends of corners are notched by machine so that the notches are fan-shaped (like a dove’s tail.) They can only be joined by laying one notched edge atop the adjoining piece and tapping them together. Because the interior end of the notch is wider than the outer edge, the boards can’t pull apart. Dove-tailed drawers speak of finer quality materials and workmanship throughout a cabinet. Classy!

Dove Tailed Joint

Dove Tailed Joint

It’s fine if the cabinet case itself has particle board panels covered with wood or laminate veneers. It’s the drawers that take the heaviest wear and tear in cabinetry. Verify how they’re constructed to get the best cabinet drawer construction for your budget. You can bet that the cabinets seen at famoushomeowners.com are dovetailed. Drop by for a demo at your home building supply or cabinet store. And remember, forget the dazzling face. Cabinets are a long-term relationship.

Caring for Your Kitchen Cabinet Hardware

Saturday, September 18th, 2010

It’s always a great idea to swap out old hardware if you’re painting or refacing your kitchen cabinets. These days, though, you may be penny-wise and looking for a quick, inexpensive solution to a tired, dingy look.

The trouble with simply shopping for a replacement knob or cabinet pull is that you might not find the exact replacement for your original set. If you’re lucky, just cleaning and freshening up old or tarnished hardware can provide a much-needed change to the overall appearance of your kitchen.

First, inventory the materials you currently have in place–polished chrome, enamel, nickel, wood, brass, antique copper, iron, or ceramics. Lowe’s recommends cleaning up your hardware as part of an overall cabinet cleaning. If you remove the doors and hinges to brush the cabinets with water and TSP, why not take off the knobs and pulls and degrease them too?

Soak Your Blues Away

I like using a plastic tub–the kind you put in your sink to soak your dishes. Add your hinges and hardware and let them soak in warm water with a gentle soap. You can use a medium-strength toothbrush to remove coats of grease and grime. Let the hardware drip-dry on paper towels. Need a tried and true cleaner–resort to that old soldier, vinegar. A 10-15 minute soak ought to remove any stubborn dirt.

The folks at Thomasville insist that you avoid using any cleaning solution that contains silicone, bleach, or ammonia because they can discolor and even damage your hardware. Avoid scouring powders and harsh pads that can leave scratches or discolorations in the knobs and hinges. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t use abrasives and strong chemicals to clean the cabinet surfaces, either, according to kitchen designers at Merillat.

Have Fun Choosing Your Kitchen Hardware

Friday, July 16th, 2010

If you’ve decided to replace or reface your kitchen cabinets, don’t shortchange yourself on hardware. Actually, I like looking at hardware just to see what’s new in terms of materials, colors, shapes, and styles. It’s almost overwhelming to narrow down your choices. Do you want bar pulls, granite inlay handles, art glass, or even the knobs of a favorite sports team? They’re available.

If you feel a cash pinch, remember that most major manufacturers and retailers carry a budget line of hardware products that are still attractive and made for durable wear. I discovered antique brass knobs for 60 cents and rustic pewter pulls for $3 that would suit a historical design to perfection.

Starting Your Cabinet Plans

Obviously, your first step is to set a ceiling on the amount you want to spend on new kitchen cabinets. If you can’t afford all the bells and whistles, remember that there are unfinished or pre-made cabinets that come ready to hang at discount prices. On the other hand, you might get by just having your existing cabinets refinished with new veneers.

If you decide on having your cabinets repainted, you have to remove existing hinges, pulls, knobs, and other hardware anyway. That gives you the perfect opportunity to visit home improvement stores, cabinet shops, or spin around on the Internet for hardware retailers. Sales come and go all the time.

I spent a few hours just surfing websites hawking bright colored ceramic knobs and pulls. If you do some digital window shopping before you finalize your plans, you might find yourself changing your entire theme after discovering exciting ways to dress up your kitchen.

Options for Cabinet Refacing

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

There are plenty of refacing options for your cabinets. You may be refacing them to change the look or style of your kitchen. Perhaps you’re considering refacing because the cabinet doors, hardware, or drawer fronts have fallen into disrepair. Or you may be readying your home for sale and want a alluring look in the kitchen.

One of the benefits of refacing is that you can change the look of your cabinets to match flooring, counters, or backsplashes that you’ve added over time that no longer fit with the old cabinet fronts.  Face Your Kitchen offers some great suggestions for refacing styles, including country, contemporary, romantic, old world, and craftsman.

Finding the Right Hardware

You should speak with your contractor about the kinds of hardware available for the refacing scheme. If you’re considering a country-style refacing project, you may want slightly distressed beadboard veneer along with open shelves for accents. Contemporary hardware is typically slender or sparse in ornamentation. Craftsman cabinetry is often highlighted by glass paneled doors and iron hardware.

Repair Home suggests using simple peel-and-stick backed veneer to change the color scheme. It’s a cost-effective way to achieve dramatic new effects without breaking the budget. Allison E. Beatty at Old House Web recommends coordinating lighting, flooring, and metal accents to complete the overall theme. She suggests hiring cabinet refacing professionals by their specialty in your era or period décor.

I’d add that unless you have direct successful experience in doing the job yourself, you get professional help. Potentially botching the job may mean sacrificing the considerable savings that a refacing produces over a complete new cabinet job.

Hanging Your Own Unfinished Cabinets? Beware.

Friday, April 30th, 2010

Unfinished kitchen cabinets offer incredible design flexibility for the self-installer homeowner. If your cabinets are prepped correctly when you get them, there’s only the primer, stain, and/or finish to consider. And you have a great of colors and hardware to customize your cabinets to match your overall kitchen scheme. Those are solid pluses. I can look at the choices at Lowes alone for several hours.

If you’re one of our readers who intends to install unfinished kitchen cabinets but has no experience, it’s obviously essential that you know what you’re up against.

Painting looks simple, but if you use too much stain and end up with dark cabinets that look horrible, you’re stuck with them. If you’re uneven in your application, you get splotches. You can spend time touching up light splotches only to end up with dark color splotches. I sympathize. Be sure to test your stain on an interior face.

Reliable Remodeler has a good guide to cabinet painting. And after paint, you’ve got an assembly job on your hands. Putting kitchen cabinets together is not as simple as many first-time DIYers imagine.

Aligning and Hanging Unfinished Cabinets

Before you bought your kitchen cabinet kit, you decided the location for your cabinets, measuring several times to be sure. Now you need to mark the wall in pencil, using a plumb line to create the top and bottom edges of your cabinets. Many homeowners forget to leave sufficient room between the bottom edge and the countertops.

Use a stud finder to position the alignment of the first upper cabinet. Mark in pencil the successive studs, each 16 inches apart. You want to attach each top cabinet to the matching stud. Hang the frames first, then assemble the cabinets on the floor, attach them to each other, and mount them as a unit.   Are you up to it?

If not, perhaps you’re a candidate for refacing with green veneers.

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