Bill Satko
Member
- Messages
- 3,222
- Location
- Methow Valley
Preamble
Our home has been steadily "improved" since we bought it new about 10 years ago. What remains though are the terrible melamine kitchen cabinets with their embarrassedly inadequate drawer slides. The doors and drawer fronts are great, it is just the boxes that are cheaply made. We are planning to sell our house next year and are going to resurface the counters (with granite or such). The problem is that the diagonal corner wall cabinet started sliding down the wall, pulling the cabinets to either side down with them. No problem I told the boss (better known as the wife), I will pull them off the wall; take them into the shop; fix the problem cab and have them back by the end of labor day weekend.
The problem?
I just could not make the necessary fix and put them back on the wall. I got to looking at how poorly the cabs were assembled and convinced myself that since the doors and drawer fronts were fine, all I needed to do was to make new boxes and eventually new drawers (out of prefinished birch or maple), but use the existing doors and drawer fronts. Easy!
The dumb part? That's me coming up with this idea with all that I have going right now. The dumber part? That's the "boss" thinking that it was a great idea. Of course the dumbest part was not deciding this course of action before I took the cabinets off the wall. The smart thing would have been to build the new boxes first and then empty the old ones. Now we have the following situation (that is only the portion of what was in the cabs!).
My plan is to come up with construction details so that I can work up a cutlist before Saturday when I plan to go to Seattle and buy enough prefinished ply to complete these first 4 cabs. I will be having a few questions in the next day or two that I hope the more experienced kitchen cabinets makers can help me with. So in advance thanks for any input.
Our home has been steadily "improved" since we bought it new about 10 years ago. What remains though are the terrible melamine kitchen cabinets with their embarrassedly inadequate drawer slides. The doors and drawer fronts are great, it is just the boxes that are cheaply made. We are planning to sell our house next year and are going to resurface the counters (with granite or such). The problem is that the diagonal corner wall cabinet started sliding down the wall, pulling the cabinets to either side down with them. No problem I told the boss (better known as the wife), I will pull them off the wall; take them into the shop; fix the problem cab and have them back by the end of labor day weekend.
The problem?
I just could not make the necessary fix and put them back on the wall. I got to looking at how poorly the cabs were assembled and convinced myself that since the doors and drawer fronts were fine, all I needed to do was to make new boxes and eventually new drawers (out of prefinished birch or maple), but use the existing doors and drawer fronts. Easy!
The dumb part? That's me coming up with this idea with all that I have going right now. The dumber part? That's the "boss" thinking that it was a great idea. Of course the dumbest part was not deciding this course of action before I took the cabinets off the wall. The smart thing would have been to build the new boxes first and then empty the old ones. Now we have the following situation (that is only the portion of what was in the cabs!).
My plan is to come up with construction details so that I can work up a cutlist before Saturday when I plan to go to Seattle and buy enough prefinished ply to complete these first 4 cabs. I will be having a few questions in the next day or two that I hope the more experienced kitchen cabinets makers can help me with. So in advance thanks for any input.
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