Help! Ugly plywood cabinets!
Swiss_Chard_Fanatic
10 years ago
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texasgal47
10 years agothreepinktrees
10 years agoRelated Discussions
let's pretend...$ not a factor! cabinetry-mdf/plywood?!? help!
Comments (7)Money is no object? Easy--solid wood custom cabinets. We were fortunate enough to have them in our last house & when I say solid wood, I mean they took a slab of clear maple and routed the design out of it and put in on hinges & attached it to the solid maple frame. Then they used solid wood slabs for the shelves inside. Those cabinets will likely outlast the rest of the house. Unfortunately, I don't know where that cabinet maker has gone--that was 12 years ago. Now we're in your boat with our new build and the cabinet confusion. Features I would want: painted cabinets with rubbed edges & a glaze, wall cabinets height to the ceiling, accent glass cabinets with lights, custom hood, giant island, slide out shelves in the cabinets, full height pullout trash cabinet, soft close drawers & doors, dove tail drawers, ornamental pulls, ornate corbels, organizers in the drawers, plug mold, pull out hampers in the laundry, cubbies with doors for kid's coats, bookbags, etc. As far as the cabinet maker doing the install--if the cabinet maker will do the install, I'd go that route. Some cabinet places call themselves custom, when they're really not--they sometimes do a semi-custom job or they consider sitting down with you & planning your layout with you to be the 'custom' part and the cabinets are standard sizes made in a factory somewhere else owned by someone other than the cabinet guy you're dealing with. If you find yourself with the semi-custom guy, I'd probably still use him. If they're made in a factory and the design was the custom part then I wouldn't think it would matter. I will point out that some cabinet dealers give you a break on the materials price if they install. I would definitely check out all my options in this respect. Think about the rooms the cabinets are going in. Do you need fancy cabinetry that matches the kitchen cabinetry in the laundry room or will a similar looking MDF cabinet do? How fancy do the kids' bath cabinets need to be? Because cost almost always plays a factor, I would spend the money in the areas that you live in the most. Check out the link below to another GW posting on the best advice someone had collected from the site. There are many references to cabinetry. Hope this helps! :-) Here is a link that might be useful: Some of the best advice from the braintrust on this forum...See MorePlywood vs engineered wood cabinet boxes
Comments (6)Couple of small things - take them or leave them as you like. It's always good to remember that we don't know what you mean, have never seen your house, never seen enough measurements and are mostly guessing! It would be better to always have the ref in the position shown in the second drawing. Counterdepth is just about never counterdepth - the refs are mostly 28" to 30" deep. Either drawing could have almost 48" of pantry in various configurations opposing the peninsula. With a 48" wide pantry, you could consider decreasing the depth to 18" (use tall bath cabinets) or even 12" deep and assemble it out of wall cabinets. Or use full depth bases under almost to the counter wall cabinets - leaving just enough space for favored canisters or a drawer underneath. Altho I would happily use deep rollouts if I didn't have any other choice for a pantry, they aren't my favorites and in this case would also block the aisle. I think the doors would not only block a person trying to enter, but also block them from trying to close the rollouts to be able to close the door. I would seriously consider trimming another 3 inches from the peninsula if I didn't lower the depth of the opposing pantry. It's hard to have somebody cruising the pantry without completely blocking the aisle. I would flip the dishwasher to the other side of the sink. When people clean up at the same time others may be cooking, that particular position is annoying. In this kitchen, I'd likely try to prep on the sink side of the range. Just personal taste and ways of working, I'd likely use an angled base in the corner plus slide the range a bit more towards the doorway - like use a 18"-24" cabinet where the first drawing has a 33". In my eyes, I'd have a place to work and a place to "pile up" ingredients ready to go and those that haven't been prepped on either side. The peninsula would be too far away for me to use daily, but a good place for the coffee pot, toaster etc. I am trying and failing to understand why 3" can't be added. But the window wall lengths in the drawings are different by 11 inches. That's definitely something to investigate. I also don't understand the concern about the length of space from the peninsula to the dining room....See Morekitchen knob help for ugly cabinets!
Comments (3)Why didn't they believe in hardware in the 80's? We have the same oak cabinets. My wife has been complaining about broken nails because of knobless drawers. But, it wasn't until I actually pulled the nail up off my finger that I ran out to put knobs on the drawers. I didn't even wait for my wife to pick out anything. I purchased some Oil rubbed bronze oval knobs just for the drawers as a temporary fix. They actually look nice with the cabinets. I will probably follow through with the rest of the cabinets after the next accident. Here is a link that might be useful: Knobs...See MoreCabinet Doors in Kitchen: Cherry wood vs. Cherry plywood?
Comments (16)It shouldn't necessarily be possible from a couple feet away to tell whether a given board is veneered or solid. Edge banding is typically a disaster waiting to happen and should be avoided at all costs. MDF panels, if you go that way, can be edged with solid wood, a much more robust solution. With solid wood every board is different, and care and attention has to be paid to color and grain matching. (With factory-made cherry cabinets this is frequently, and glaringly not done, then the differences are badly disguised with stain). Plywood will typically be more uniform and free from sapwood. The style of door is the primary consideration. Frame and panel doors with raised panel have to be made from solid wood, Slab doors can be done either way. Frame and panel doors, if properly made from well seasoned wood almost never warp. Slab doors will be more prone to change shape with changes in humidity. Some pieces of plywood move more than solid in my experience, other less, and sadly I don't know how to predict which is which in advance. Veneer comes in a myriad of forms, either rotary cut or sliced, The sliced veneer can be laid up in random, repeating, or bookmatched patterns to achieve the look you want. A specialty plywood supplier will have all of these options available for a common veneer like cherry. A cabinet maker can also make shop-made veneer to exactly match solid wood parts, assuming he has the sequential boards cut from the same log to permit precise matching. There's no end to how crazy you can get if you're really fussy about color and grain in cherry!...See MoreCEFreeman
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