Ikea cabinets are european style not framed cabinets. Making doors and drawers for european style that fits precisely is not that easy even for pro's. I dont recommend trying this. If your off just by a few millimeters it will show. Your much better off selecting one of theirs (Ikea's) shaker style door/drawer fronts.

Use space balls or an equivalent. You can use dowels, biscuits or tenons to join, not just glue.

Because you're the cabinetmaker, you can make sure you have the correct dimensions before you finish. Inset doors are much more dependent on having the exact correct dimensions. So I wouldn't worry.

I built my own cabinets for years early in my career. Back then, dowels were the common stile to rail joining system. Since the advent of biscuits, it's a toss up. However, I would not want or use pocket screws in cabinet door construction.
I've never used space balls, just let it float, but then again I'm old school.
The "Shaker", (flat, recessed panel, square sticking) is about one of the easiest door to make, go for it have fun ... piece of cake :)

There are several companies that make doors specifically for IKEA cabinetry, so its not just "use IKEA or build your own." Here's a thread where I compared three of the most popular: [https://www.houzz.com/discussions/barker-doors-vs-semihandmade-vs-scherrs-in-ikea-kitchen-results-dsvw-vd~5182903[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/barker-doors-vs-semihandmade-vs-scherrs-in-ikea-kitchen-results-dsvw-vd~5182903)

Having said that, if you have the time and skill set, Game on!

(Also, they do have a light grey shaker called Lerhyttan that has been temporarily pulled, but should be back in early 2019.)

Proper shaker doors are built with a "cope and stick " method. If you are unfamiliar with this it's probably not the best idea to build your own. Getting them square and uniform to the correct finish size can be tricky without the proper equipment. There are lots of companies that outsource doors to cabinet makers. Doors for Euro boxes are not more difficult. No having the right equipment is what makes it difficult.

I plan to use my rail/stile router bit set. Is it better to just glue and clamp the frame together, or would there be additional benefit to also pocket drilling and plugging all the frames?

The only reason to peg properly done rail and style is for aesthetics. The tongue and groove between your rail and style is plenty of glue joint. I would never pocket hole a cabinet door, nor do I know anyone who would.

European overlay doors are easy to make, the only problem you will have is drilling the hinges in the right spot. I recommend grabbing a couple of Haggeby doors (they are only a few dollars) and using those as templates for the hinges. Just drill through the Haggeby doors and mount wood blocks on the three sides nearest a hinge and you have a perfect template.

For the center veneer panel, is it best to just let it float (@ X amount of clearance) or is it better to use a product like space balls ? Trying to minimize how much unfinished would becomes visible as the doors expand/contract.

Uhmm. I like space balls in general as they keep the movement even. Without some rubber spacer the wood tends to set on the bottom and move more at the top. Having said that your rails and stiles are a couple of inches thick, how much do you think they are going to move? Wood moves tangentially and is incredibly stable longitudinally, since your rails and stiles will span longitudinally you are going to get pretty minor movement. Since you aren't using solid wood panels, the panels are going to be stable. So really the difference is largely immaterial but then again so is the price.

I build custom cabinets and I order my doors from a company in Kentucky. Saves time and money.

What company in Kentucky (just curious).

If I'm building doors myself at all, they are mortice and tenon, because that's what the customer wants, otherwise I source them out to Conestoga.

These are the rail/stile bits i'm going to use.

And this is hinge jig i have.

I think i'm going to build a test door over the holiday break and see how it turns out.

I found a cabinet guy locally that will paint them with a conversion varnish finish (1 coat primer, 2 coats paint). He charges $45 a door and $25 a drawer...given the variety of sizes now days for those 2 groups, i suspect if i bring everything to him at once i'll get a "job" price to paint them all.

The only 2 unknowns i have at this point now are:

1. Because i'll be using 1" x wood (actual 3/4" thick) whereas the IKEA ones are 5/8" thick, do i need to position the hinge differently from the pivot edge of the door since it will be thicker?
2. Are the hinge pockets on the door always the same distance from the top and bottom? Example, if the pocket centerline is 3" from either the top or bottom edge on a 20" tall door, is it the same for 30" or 40" tall door?

IKEA is 2hrs away from me. I bought a Grimslov door the last time we drove there for a color sample. So i was going to use that as a dimensional template for the hinge and overall size (when they say 18x40 door, not sure if that's true dimensions or not).

Here is a webpage we set up that describes our process of building a shaker door.

The Anatomy of a Door (How It's Made)

Scherr...Awesome write up! I like your explanation of materials. I was planning on maple frames and maple veneer panel. I would have never guessed poplar was good enough to be a door frame. I knew places used MDF. Do you use MDF for both poplar and maple options? What's the deciding factor between poplar and maple...cost?

The wife doesn't want to see any wood grain. But i want something that's robust, hence the reason i was leaning towards maple.

Cope and stick joints with MDF center panels are the standard for almost all cabinet makers.

That's a really nice Shaker profile. I've been building my own cabinets using a Freud bit set with the same profile, and it's easy to keep that beveled edge clean on the cabinets that are already installed and in use. Great choice.

This isn't one of your 2 remaining questions, but yes, use space balls. I use two of them on one side of the panel, and none on top or bottom.

If you're concerned that your doors are 1/8" thicker than the Ikea ones, I think there are at least two ways to check whether you need to adjust the hinge placement. First is to use the sample door you have - install it on a box and measure the clearance as you slowly open and close it. Second is to call a Blum rep and ask them which hinges to use for your specific use case (frameless boxes and 3/4" doors) and ask for a mounting template or at least the mounting specifications for that particular hinge.

If you don't already have one of those phenolic test blocks for setting up your drill press to drill the 35 mm cup, get one with the correct spacing. I find mine to be a huge timesaver that makes hinge placement repeatable every time.

Cope and stick joints with MDF center panels are the standard for almost all cabinet makers.

The cope and stick thing is both true, and yet not really true. Cope and stick has to do with coping one end such that it becomes complementary to the other end. So technically speaking a but joint is cope and stick. However, if you tried to convince any woodworker of that, they would kick you out of their shop for being an ignorant fool.

To modern woodworkers, cope and stick typically means using complementary router bits and that is what is pictured above. However, the way we use cope and stick today it is not necessary for shaker doors, and shakers didn't use anything that would be called cope and stick today, as it is in opposition of everything shaker design is about.

It is a tenoned end inserted into a complementary groove and is nothing other than a mortise and tenon joint. Sometimes the rails and stiles of the face front are opened up a few degrees and then it gets closer to a cope and stick but still it isn't something that requires multiple router bits like an ogee or a round edge.

You don't need special tools to make perfect European overlay shaker style doors. In fact, you need a few good clamps, some work space and a table saw. A jointer and a planer make it better, but if you are buying your wood from a retail wood shop you can usually pay to have one edge squared and the lumber planed for you, and with a tape measure and a couple of straight boards you can make a 90 degree jig.

Almost anyone of any skill level can do shaker doors with some time and a few practice runs. So the question becomes why do places like Scherr's Cabinets & Doors Inc make so many of these doors if anyone can do it? The answer is because they are a lot more efficient at it and are really quite reasonably priced. If you value your time at all, then a one off shaker door project is a bad proposition. You could probably bag groceries during the time you would have been working on the doors and end up with enough money to buy the doors and have quite a bit of money left over.

If, however, heaven on earth is Saturday coffee with little bits of sawdust floating it it, then it might be a great project.

Just my 2 cents btw.

Because i'll be using 1" x wood (actual 3/4" thick) whereas the IKEA ones are 5/8" thick, do i need to position the hinge differently from the pivot edge of the door since it will be thicker?

Nope.

Are the hinge pockets on the door always the same distance from the top and bottom? Example, if the pocket centerline is 3" from either the top or bottom edge on a 20" tall door, is it the same for 30" or 40" tall door?

Yep. However, Ikea uses a special measurement for their hinges and you should make a template. I believe it is 48mm from top and bottom, but I have not measured their new cabinets myself.

Thanks to everyone for their help!!

I think it's so cool that a supplier like Scherr's is participating on this board and offering guidance to DIY'ers like me who's basically making something they offer for sale. Very cool!

We are still talking about 2 different animals- not just apples and oranges. European style cabinets (frameless) dont have rails and stiles. Meaning a framed face cabinet will have rails and stiles. You can get a door off a bit on a framed cabinet, and your never see it, but if your door on a frameless cabinet is off or not square then they wont fit properly, go together or have gaps, especially on twin door cabinets. You will see your mistakes, and if you never done this before; you will have mistakes/redo's.

Using a router to make rail and stile joints, I dont know any quality cabinet maker that does this. You need a Shaper.

We are still talking about 2 different animals- not just apples and oranges. European style cabinets (frameless) dont have rails and stiles. Meaning a framed face cabinet will have rails and stiles.

I am sure you are fantastic at what you do, but it very obviously isn't cabinets. The terms rail and stile came from door making a very long time ago and were actually parts of a ladder. Frame and panel construction (needed for wood movement) created doors that resembled ladders and the terms rail and stile were used to refer to the parts of a door, specifically entry doors as few homes had any other doors. The stiles were essentially the Old English word for ladder and rail was what we now call a rung.

I have seen cabinet face frames also called rails and stiles, but that is more of an appropriation of the original terms used in door making.

I assure you that cabinet doors have parts that are called rails and stiles. I have personally built cabinet doors for Ikea Akurum cabinets which are European overlay and I know pretty well what they are. Furthermore, I assure you that Scherr's has also made Ikea doors "a couple" of times and they seem to agree with the terminology.

You can get a door off a bit on a framed cabinet, and your never see it, but if your door on a frameless cabinet is off or not square then they wont fit properly, go together or have gaps, especially on twin door cabinets.

You can get a partial overlay off to some degree and it may not be noticed, however, recessed cabinets are much harder to get right than frameless. Furthermore, I assure you that any hobby woodworker can achieve tolerances much tighter than the average cabinetmaker. Seriously, a door that is perfectly square and correctly sized (at least beyond human detection) are fairly easy to achieve and honestly because of the adjustments on the Blum hinges you don't have to be that exact.

Using a router to make rail and stile joints, I dont know any quality cabinet maker that does this. You need a Shaper.

This is complete BS. Cabinet shops will often use a shaper because of the advantages of an induction motor in an industrial setting. It can chew off a bit more material which might be important if you are making cabinets for a living as you can cut a deep bevel on a wood panel and backcut the panel. However, router bits are a lot cheaper and a routers often produce cleaner cuts, as you are comparing 20k rpm to 10k rpm (yes I know you can get 4 blade shaper heads, but back to the expense vs. time thing).

Having said that, you don't need either one. I have both a shaper and a nice router table and I would still probably do shaker doors on my table saw. I could run a dozen doors on the table saw perfectly while you are still setting up your router bit and running test pieces.

The router vs. shaper comes down to smoothness of cut. 1/2" shaft vs. 1.25" shaft. Which has less cavitation? A 600 lb machine vs a 5 lb machine? Which has less vibration? Which has better facility for connecting dust collection and power feeders? Which has tilting arbors and is reversible?

BTW peeps, a cope & stick system relies completely on the glue and nails, it is not a mechanical joint like mortise & tenon.

Casey

I read somewhere that there will be a real white shaker style coming from ikea in the spring. Anyone else recall seeing this?

Matt,

As a fellow diy'er I would urge you to make more than one sample door/drawer front. Practice changing the router bits and getting the height just right. There's more precision to it than you might think. I'm not a highly skilled woodworker, just a hobbyist. I made 6 doors for a built-in book case, glued and clamped the pieces together and used 1/4" plywood for the center panels. I was painting them, which is a good thing, because it hid alot of sins.

After finishing that project, I knew there was no way I would make my own kitchen cabinet doors. It can be done DIY, but know thyself.

@iCustomSofa - Very True about the type of cabinetry being important. I understand that you're referring to the stiles and rails of the face frame itself, not the doors in this case. Cabinets with "face frames" are much more forgiving with... less-than-perfect workmanship. Frameless, which is what IKEA is, requires a higher level of accuracy both in sizing and your ability to achieve perfectly square joints. Any imperfection 1/16" and over will be visible, and adjusting your hinges won't always hide your mistake. This is because the doors and drawers will sit right up next to each other with a 1/8" gap between--that's a fine line! 1/16" will cause that line to deviate in size by 50%! So--excellent point, I can tell that you absolutely have had a fair amount of experience working with cabinetry.

The router vs. shaper comes down to smoothness of cut. 1/2" shaft vs. 1.25" shaft. Which has less cavitation?

I hope neither have any detectable cavitation, and if either one did it would have nothing to do with spindle or shank diameter. Are you really saying that a router blade is pumping more air into wood?

As to the weight of the machine, you are not going use the router unconnected from a router table, so what you are really comparing is the mechanical connection between router motor to table vs. the mechanical connection of shaper motor to table.

I am not trying to be rude, but what are you all building doors for? Kitchen cabinets for the International Space Station? For a few thousand years frame and panel construction was done with a wooden router plane working at something like 10 cuts per minute... Do you really think that wobble in a blade cutting 42,000 times per minute is going to create a measurable defect in a hygroscopic material?

NO. I have a Lie-Nielson router plane and I often just grab it for one off work. I dare say, my hand tool work will destroy most production work regardless of the machine you produced it on.

There are some styles of doors we make that are machined on router tables, some that are machined on shapers, and some on a very large CNC machine with a lot of inertia. They all create varying levels of chatter and tear-out. Inertia/weight is an important part of the equation but so is wood selection, technique, and the sharpness/quality of your blades/bits.

A shaper clamps your stile or rail to a table that slides on bearings. This adds a lot of stability and weight (inertia) to your part as it (the table) slides said part smooth as butter into the shaping head (which is much larger than a router bit.)

A router table can be set up with a power-feed, but most diy'ers will be using feather-boards or guiding jigs. So what is protecting your item from deflecting from the power of your bit is the holding power of your jig and the inertia of the part itself. It looks like you'll be working with new, sharp bits and so I'm sure you'll be able to do good work with it. You also seem to have a fair bit of experience with carpentry since you're making your own cabinet boxes.

People who work or have worked in manufacturing facilities care a LOT about reducing chatter and achieving thousandths of an inch in precision because we don't have the luxury of time to go back and grab Ye Olde Trusty Router Plane to hone in the part just right after the fact. In fact, after running tens of thousands of parts through these types of machines it would be difficult for me to imagine doing it any other way. A DIY'er will have the time and the incentive to slow down and make something perfect (or good enough) for what they're doing.

I, myself, when I'm done building cabinets at work, like to go home and take out my panel saw or bench plane and build chairs. Old hand tools' ability to achieve a similar or greater levels of precision than power tools, even today, is quite a marvel. Power tools (even industrial grade machines) may make short work of a project but they come with their own drawbacks. I wish, economically, we could viably run a business where everyone used hand tools. I really do.

I have a business building wainscoting. I work almost exclusively in walnut and I have been trying to get out of the business for ten years, I just keep getting drug back in for one more job.

My shaper doesn't have a sliding table and neither does my router table. I am not a huge fan of auto feeders. I want to feel the blades biting into the panels to know when there is a problem.

Most shops I have seen, and I have seen quite a few, are using hand fed shapers. At this point your operations (Scherr's) are more manufacturing than what most people consider production cabinet shops.

----

While all of this discussion may seem interesting, it isn't relevant. The OP wants shaker style doors, which are about the only doors I would tell an amateur woodworker to tackle.

The difference between a router, a shaper, and a table saw when building shaker doors is completely immaterial. You are cutting one slot and one shoulder joint in every corner. That is it, and only 50% of those will even be visible to individuals taller than 3" and shorter than 7'6".

Squaring them up is simply not hard. You clamp into a squared jig on a table grid lined to square. This also fixes size issues. A woodworker not skilled enough to make any other door can make nearly perfect shaker doors if they take their time in the prep.

You are much more likely to have the cabinets be off and out of level than the doors. Again, the savings are not worth the time and honestly staining and painting are what make it a bad choice for most amateurs.

Quote "The stiles were essentially the Old English word for ladder and rail was what we now call a rung." Now days; This term is used often in several industries, not just cabinet making (or ladders) believe it or not; meaning anything going vertical is a stile and anything attached to that horizontally is a rail. In the upholstery frames business we all use rails as any horizontal piece. Now vertical pieces can be called anything from stiles - stumps or posts, just depending on the who your talking to.

@Matt - If you are unable to find a source for 1/4" MDF, you can use 1/4" veneered ply instead. That's a very normal alternative. Birch or Maple ply will give you the least amount of visible grain pattern through paint. Opt for something with an MDF core if you can.

Hardboard has a slick waxy surface. Paint will not bond well. Don't want to discourage anyone from doing woodworking projects. It's very satisfying to build something yourself. That said a lot of cabinet makers will outsource doors and drawer boxes to companies that have serious production equipment specially for this. I can list ten things that can go wrong making your own doors with hobbyist equipment and limited experience. Something like how do you intend on coping the ends of rails would be one of them. An inverted router and sled set up would be helpful but it could be done on a table saw if need be.

Looks good. I allow 1/8" for 1/4" space balls. Also, if you want to make the assembly a bit easier on yourself, you can make the stiles a couple of inches longer and then cut them to size ("de-horn" them) after assembly.

Wow! You did an excellent job! Good work.

Yes, you could do that. You definitely want the back of the false drawer front to be supported and flush on the back. Another option would be to use solid stock for the center panel and rabbet that piece instead of rabbeting the rails and stiles.

Are you using featherboards on both the table and the router table fence? I use both so that I'm only using push sticks to feed the stiles. I place them tight enough that there is no slop and it's almost difficult (but not dangerously so) to feed. You can also spray your fence and table with a silicon spray for glide.

If you didn't do this for your sample door, mill your rail ends first. Then mill the stiles and the long edge of the rails second. That way if you have any tearout on the rail ends, it's hidden by the second lengthwise cut.

And also, if you haven't already, make a setup block out of a scrap of wood that is the same thickness as your door material. When you're finally ready to do the doors for real, milling all the rails - and then all the stiles - allows less room for error and is more efficient (i.e., fewer changeovers from one bit to the other).

Ikea makes some more Shaker style doors than the ones you list. The solid wood choices are Torhamn ( which is a solid ash door with clear coat ), Grimslov Dark Brown ( which unlike the off white Grimslov is made of wood) and Lerhyttan Black ( black stained ash).

Any of these solid wood doors should take paint well.

FWIW there are several kitchen DIY projects I've seen online that painted the Torhamn doors. That seems to be the most popular choice for painting because the color is light.

The thing about IKEA is that it's pretty hard to beat them on price even when doing DIY. By the time you add up the costs for tools and wood it's possible you won't save much money over repainting one of Ikea's own solid wood Shaker doors.

Of course, if you enjoy woodworking then go for it.

Unless you're prepared to deal with finish problems (fisheyes), I'd stay away from silicone lubes on the equipment that touches unfinished wood.

Casey

Yes. But the back edge of the panel and the frame should be flush wit each other (toward the back, so thickness-wise) so that you don't bow the front when you add hardware.