Building Upper Face Frame Cabinets

Frameless and face frame cabinets tools used.

Building upper face frame cabinets.

One of the easiest cabinet carcasses to build is an upper cabinet and to make it even easier there s no face frame. Build the face frame so that the bottom rail rails are horizontal boards and stiles are vertical boards projects 1 16 in. With frameless construction you make all the parts before assembling anything. Individual face frame members fasten to the foundation boxes one piece at a time held in place with glue and clamps or glue and metal pins or brads.

Above the bottom shelf of the cabinet. Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation. The plans show how 3 4 thick solid wood 21 4 to 21 2 wide is used for most face frame members. This style is referred to as frameless or european style cabinet.

Learn how to make simple face frame upper and lower cabinets including doors and drawers. E joints between stiles and rails get rein forced with 20 biscuits or dowels plunged into the assembled joints from the top. Face frames on sides of kitchen cabinets should overlap 1 4 in. You assemble the boxes then make the face frames to fit them.

This makes room for adjustments when installing them next to one another. Then follow up by making the doors and drawers. That s a big challenge in building conventional face frame cabinets. I definitely recommend face frame cabinets over frameless or euro style and the good news is face frames are pretty easy to build.

The sample base and wall cabinets shown below have these features to make building them as simple as possible. Wood magazine s kevin boyle shows you this foolproof method expla. Begin with the right cabinet dimensions. Face frames cover plywood edges.

On the outside edge. Well since the face frame is 1 4 bigger on the ends you can simply use 1 4 plywood in matching veneer or painted as we did to finish out those ends. The 3 4 plywood case eliminates panel jointing planing and glue ups.