Moving along with our kitchen cabinets build, today I set out to make the cabinet face frame. This isn’t an astonishingly difficult task, but I was apprehensive because of the fact that this is where the money’s at as far as cabinets are concerned. With the carcass, any small mistakes can be covered up by the countertop, the drawers and the face frame. If you screw up the cabinet face frame, there’s not many options for rectifying it.
Furthermore, in building the kitchen cabinet face frame, I attempted a new technique (for me), and that was to build to entire face frame separate from the carcass. Normally, I build the carcass and then apply the parts that make up the face frame – one by one. By building the entire face frame separate, each part is more integral, and the joints have greater strength. The downside is that extensive planning is required to ensure that the face frame meets the carcass where it’s supposed to.
At least, that’s what I thought. Once I actually got started building the face frame it became much simpler than I had thought. By using the individual parts of the face frame as spacers, I could ensure that the subsequent parts were aligned correctly. For example, to lay out the correct location of the vertical stiles, I simply used the horizontal rails as spacers. This would ensure that the stiles were in the exact spot they needed to be.
When it came time to place the rails into the face frame, I cut additional spacers that equalled the height of the drawers we were intending to place. By using this method, I quickly put together the face frame, and everything worked out awesome. I love the feeling of overcoming a challenge, or something that I had been apprehensive about. It’s one thing just to be victorious, but to gain that victory in an easy fashion makes it all the more enjoyable.