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Glass upper cabinet doors

16 years ago

I'm planning to have two sets of clear glass upper cabinet doors which will hold dishes and glasses. I like the look of mullions, but I'm concerned that the shelves and what's on them will interfere with the horizontal lines of the doors. Does anyone have doors with an unbroken glass insert? Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help!

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Comments (7)

Julie Drew
16 years ago
I personally prefer plain glass panels to having mullions that don't line up with the shelves. Here's an idea of a glass door design from the crown point website - it is sort of a compromise solution. You can just try to line up your top shelf with the mullion, and not worry about the rest of them.

Here is a link that might be useful: crown point glass door design
hoffman
16 years ago
I also did beveled glass inserts with no mullions -- both because I didn't want to have to worry about lining up the shelves & also because I just didn't like the look of the mullions. My old kitchen had beveled glass uppers, too.
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Just thought I'd chime in with my lighting plan for the interior of my cabinets. I did LED pucks all around, dimmable. The controllers are mounted in the cabinet above my range hood, which of course is more or less useless given the 8" duct running through it. So I have regular 'Romex' 14/2 wire running from the 2 dimmer switches on my wall to the 2 controller units in that space. Then I ran Romex 14/2 wire and stubbed it out of the walls under each section of cabinets and above each section of cabinets. You can see it stubbed out of the walls in some of the pics. One dimmer controls the interior lighting, one the under cabinet lights. You can't run low voltage wire inside walls, so I roughed in standard 14/2 from the controller units above the range to each isolated section of lighting. The controllers send low voltage current across that full size wire, and then I pigtail on the low voltage wire/LED pucks. All of that wire is just strung from one hole to the other drilled through the cabinets and can be pulled out etc. The under cabinet lighting is all enclosed in light boxes mounted to the bottom of the cabinets - no exposed wiring. The 2 dimmers have to be designed for low voltage lighting - no big deal. But 'digital' dimmers tend to not work - you need the mechanical slider type. In each upper section of cabinet I installed a single puck, in the center. So it's more or less hidden behind the door stiles. In the all glass cabinets I put 2 pucks at the top and they have glass shelves. 19 lights in total. I also have 10 recessed lights in the ceiling, which almost never get used. I wanted LED's for the lack of heat. They're warm to the touch but you can put your hand over them and keep it there - just warm, not hot. 2 years in and the lights have been trouble free. in hindsight I would have skipped the whole dimmer business - we never use the dimmers - always just full on. If we entertained and wanted ambient lighting I suppose dimming them would be nice, but we don't do that often.
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In order to break up two sets of uppers facing each other on two ends of the kitchen, we put in two symmetrical pair of glass fronts on one end flanking a window (dishes and glassware) and in the small single set over our range vent on the other side (vases, pitchers). This served the purpose of breaking up the multi-door look and it gave some sophistication. DH figured out how to run a plywood camouflage panel in front of the metal vent so it doesn't show. We used Bendheim "Double Satin Fibers" but a less expensive matte or rippled glass would have sufficed. I didn't want larder items to be exposed to view.
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You can remove the center panel and replace it with glass. It will look fine, especially if you use something other than clear glass. Maybe something like ribbed, antiqued, pressed leaf, or with a screen laminated in between two layers. I would only do the double cabinet to the left of the sink, and I'd add corbels to give it a "hutch" type of appearance. Keep the door to the right as a solid door. Add in light rail molding for all uppers. Also think about doing glass shelves and interior lighting. Those are the finishing details that will make it really work well.
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Definitely get them painted and do the glass. You will be able to see your pieces (just keep them close to the front. Also, it really is very simple to add some LED puck lights to the upper cabinets. You would just need your electrician add an outlet or two above the cabinets (but low enough so they wouldn’t be seen). They have plug in pucks and all that is needed is to drill a small hole in the top of each cabinet to feed the wires through, attach the puck to the inside of the cabinet and then plug them into the outlets above the cabinets. Many of them also come with remotes and are dimable. Here is an example.... https://www.amazon.com/WOBANE-Lighting-Dimmable-Bookshelf-Aluminum/dp/B07VS4D6T3/ref=sr_1_13_sspa?keywords=warm+plug+in+puck+lights&qid=1582936772&s=hi&sr=1-13-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFJT1dCMTBWTEVYTkEmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA3NDcyMTFER0FUVUJFQTBLMzQmZW5jcnlwdGVkQWRJZD1BMDE1MzU3OTIyTFZPUVQyUDY2VFkmd2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGYmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl
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alku05
16 years ago
We did plain glass doors too.

If you do choose mullions, just use glass shelves and then you won't have to worry about the shelves not lining up with the mullions.
skypathway
16 years ago
washing glass door with mullions is time consuming. Hoffman's bevelled glass doors are elegant and beautiful.

Sky
nodirthere
16 years ago
I wanted to have some design because I thought it was too plain and looked into a vertical "fish shaped" leaded glass design- I found a mnf. on line -it was about $125 each glass insert. I ended up keeping the clear glass-and putting a glass shelf in (see on this forum under before/after pics-oak to cream/glazed)- but I haven't ruled out ordering those and popping them in-the site had a ton of designs- (I tried faux lead from the craft store but it looked horrible)
zelmar
16 years ago
We did the Crown Point glass doors I think thedinos is referring to. We're happy with how they look and I don't find them any worse to clean than any other glass (since so few squares are involved-it's kind of nice having smaller areas broken up to work in instead of a large expanse of glass to get streak-free.)
{{!gwi}} {{gwi:1570742}}
kkcooks
16 years ago
We also ended up with all-glass (beveled), no mullions. The shelves are glass as well, and we store only glass and crystal in these cabinets. Everyday glasses, wine glasses, whatever.

The glass shelves allow the light from the interior cabinet lighting to shine through the entire cabinet. We are very happy with the effect and glad that we decided against mullions. OT--some people seem to call them muntins. Either way--I love them in our windows, glad they are not in our cabinets!

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