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Decorative frameless drawer fronts?

9 years ago

I'm building our kitchen with frameless cabinets and almost all drawers. They are easier to build, and have more room, but they look pretty plain. I'd like to dress up the drawer fronts somehow. Some of them are too shallow to do any kind of a raised panel, etc., so they are starting out as plain slabs. I'm curious what others have done, such as edge treatments, or maybe applied moldings? The decor is a bit Craftsman. They will be painted a solid color.

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Comments (7)

amberm145
9 years ago
What is the treatment you're doing on the doors?

I am a shaker girl. And as long as the drawer is at least 6" high, you can do the rails and stiles on the drawer front. They will often make the rails thinner so there's room for the handles.

Also, sometimes the bigger drawers are 5 piece, while the smaller ones are slab.
dcward89
9 years ago
We have Shaker cabinets and almost all lower drawers. All of ours have the top, smaller drawer as slab and the remaining drawers, which are bigger, with the stiles and rails.
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Hey, thanks semi and brianhs for your fast responses about CP's normal (inset) drawers! I'll give them a call and find out about whether they can do the standard dovetail drawers with their frameless line. I've been leaning towards frameless because of the footprint in my kitchen space, and everything I've heard about CP has been wonderful, so I'd like to not have to eliminate them as a choice. brianhs, thanks also for that mention of the drawer front beveled edges. I just visited a kitchen place today to look at Woodmode, and in talking with the KD there, I discovered that I had not thought one thought about how significant the drawer fronts were going to be in my kitchen where I am imagining lots of drawer bases! And yet, drawer fronts are not usually depicted on the cabinet makers Web sites as much as the doors. Thanks again! la_koala
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I would imagine the biggest difference is in the depth (up & down) of drawers since frameless don't have the stiles across. On my bank of Brookhaven (frameless) four drawers, the top drawer is shallowest at about 3.5" deep. The next two drawers are about 4" and the bottom is about 9.5" deep. They are 19.75" front to back, and on a 23" wide custom cab, the width is about 19 7/8", so I suppose a regular 24" cab would be 20 7/8" on the inside. I really can't vouch for the accuracy of the top drawer depth, but on the three drawer bank, the depth of the bottom two drawers is 10.25". The sides and back do not go all the way up, but that hasn't been a problem. Full extension drawers are definitely worth having. We don't have soft close which I don't regret. But full extension means full use, and I wish that I had that feature on every single drawer in the house. What a difference!
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Partial overlay. Will you have as much of a gap between the drawers as the example you posted? So with my idea of adding two drawer fronts to a taller drawer box front, there would be a slight gap between the drawer box and the frame, on each side. Which would be seen between the gap between the drawer fronts. OK, I understand now. If you asked the the cabinet maker to paint the front of the drawer box, and then used a small piece of painted trim on each side (attached to the cabinet frame) to fill most of the gap, would that work? I drew this to see what it would look like in my mind, and to illustrate what I was trying to do. The red squares represent the gaps. Click to enlarge:
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mushcreek
Original Author
9 years ago
There will only be 4 cabinet doors, under the sinks. I'll either do them in beadboard, or maybe just Shaker style. I'm trying to avoid doing stile and rail drawer fronts, as there are 32 of them. That's a lot of work! I'd like to figure out a way to add just a little detail to the slabs.
amberm145
9 years ago
No uppers at all?

Since you're painting them, what about an MDF slab with "faux" rails and stiles routed out?

Or, with solid wood, you can still route a grove on either side? (a couple of inches from the edge?)
amberm145
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Here's what I was thinking of. The false drawer on this vanity has 2 grooves on it. http://hi.atgimg.com/img/l/13206/772515385216_ca.jpg

Apparently Houz doesn't allow links with _ in it, so you'll have to cut and paste.
suzanne_sl
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago

Our old cabinets had this simple routed detail on the fronts of all the doors and drawers. I always liked it. (Click on the photo to make it bigger.)

Edit: OK, never mind clicking on the photo. That only works here in the commenting box. Photos are just weird here.
mushcreek
Original Author
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
That's a thought- I could cut very tiny grooves to give the appearance of stiles and rails. Since they will be brush painted, I can correct the grain orientation with paint.

No- no uppers at all, at least not now. With windows on two walls, I only have one wall for uppers, and neither of us like them. For me, they're in my face, and for my wife, she can only reach the bottom shelf. The kitchen is so light and airy; we're already thinking about what kind of artwork we'd like to hang on the non-window wall.

Here are the cabinets as they are now. The pulls are antique pulls from type trays.

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