Now that the carcass has been assembled and the face frames have been attached and the drawers are all installed, we’re ready to continue our kitchen cabinet build by making the cabinet door frames and the drawer faces. The frames will be half- lapped joints with a 1/2″ plywood panel housed in a 1/2″ x 1/2″ rabbet in the rails and stiles of the door. The drawer faces will simply be edge laminated 1x lumber dimensioned at our openings – 1/8″.
Creating the drawer faces is simple enough; measure the opening and create a panel by edge gluing lumber together. Once you’ve created a panel that’s larger than the opening, simply dimension it to the opening dimensions, minus 1/8″ which results in a face that has a 1/16″ reveal all the way around it.
By centering this face in the opening, you can drive a screw into the drawer where your handle pull will go. Once it is temporarily secured, pull out the drawer and screw from the inside of the door into the face. This now secures the drawer face to the drawer itself. You can then remove the screw and install the drawer pull.
As far as the door frames go, I’ll be doing a half-lapped rail and stile made of 1×3’s. It’s important to remember when cutting the length of these pieces to leave them the entire length. That is, do not subtract for the width of the coordinating piece. You need that extra length to form the lapped joint.
I’ll start by ripping a 1/2″ x 1/2″ rabbet along the back of one side of all the rails and stiles. Then I remove 1/4″x2.5″ off the face side of the rails, and a 1/2″ x 2.5″ off the back of the stiles. These pieces then form the half-lapped joint. These joints are then simply glued and tacked together. Lastly, the 1/2″ plywood panel is inserted from the back side of the panel, glued and tacked into place.
We opted to paint our doors and drawer faces as we had painted the rest of the cabinet carcass. The great thing about finishing this step is that now our cabinet is actually usable. We have installed it inside and we’re ready to start building the countertop!