This is a run-through on the build­ing of a cab­i­net for a cus­tomer of mine. The cab­i­net needed to be cus­tom made in order to fit a hole that was in the fin­ished base­ment wall of their house. This was by far the largest cab­i­net that I have ever built myself.

The dimen­sions of the cab­i­net ended up being 79 in. high, 46 in. wide and 24 in. deep. This left me with a half an inch of play around the cab­i­net to be sure that it would fit into the hole with­out any prob­lems. The bot­tom area of the cab­i­net where the doors are is 24 in. high. I used self-closing hinges for the doors so there would be no need for any catches. The top area of the cab­i­net was to have three shelves that could be adjusted, so they were set on clips that hooked into rails inlaid into the sides of the cab­i­net. The entire cab­i­net was con­structed out of oak ply­wood and solid oak boards for the trim, door frame and braces. The cab­i­net would sit entirely recessed into the wall and the edge would be trimmed out with oak casement.

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At the start of this project I drew up plans for the cab­i­net as well as dig­i­tal 3-d mod­els to show to the cus­tomer so they could approve the designs. As this would be a very expen­sive cab­i­net when it was all said and done I wanted to be sure that the cus­tomer knew what they would be get­ting and that it would work for them the way they wanted.

When I started, every panel that would have to be cut out of the ply­wood was mea­sured and marked before any­thing was cut to ensure the most effi­cient use of the ply­wood. The sides were the first to be cut out. A notch was cut into the front edge at the bot­tom on each side piece: this was to accom­mo­date the frame for under­neath the doors. The notch was only cut a ½ in. deep because a quar­ter inch trim piece was to be added to the ends of the ply­wood to hide the plies. This would then match the ¾ in. depth of the frame. Two grooves were laid out and cut into the top sec­tion of each side panel to accom­mo­date the rails for the shelves.

The hor­i­zon­tal pan­els; top, bot­tom and mid­dle were cut out next; I then sanded all of the pan­els down to get rid of any feath­ered edges and to make the final sand­ing a lit­tle eas­ier. As I cut and sanded all of the pan­els I kept them all marked by writ­ing on a piece of mask­ing tape and stick­ing it onto each panel. This infor­ma­tion made it easy to tell at a glance what panel went where and which side of the panel was the best look­ing side and there­fore needed to be fac­ing the inte­rior of the cabinet.

Once all of the main pan­els were cut out and pre­pared I began assem­bling the main box of the cab­i­net. All of the joints were pegged, glued and screwed together to ensure a strong hold.

Once the main box was assem­bled, I cut the ¼ in. back­ing panel and glued and screwed it on. This panel being in place held the cab­i­net square.

The frame for the doors was next to get cut and assem­bled; here again all of the joints were pegged, glued and screwed together. I clamped the frame in place, laid out all of the fas­ten­ing points and drilled each with a counter sink bit. The frame was then glued and fas­tened in place with screws. Oak pugs were pressed into the counter sink holes to hide the screw heads.

Finally the ¼ in.  by ¾ in. trim was glued and nailed to the exposed edges of the pan­els to fin­ish the assem­bly of the main cab­i­net box. Wood filler was used to cover the nail heads, to fill and voids in between trim and pan­els or any chips or dents in the wood.

For the rest of the oak shelf fronts and the door frames, I set up the router and rounded over the edges of the shelf fronts and put a roman ogee on the edges of the door frame pieces. Also the inside edge of the door frame pieces had to have a groove cut in the back to fit the door cen­ter panels.

All of the shelf pan­els were cut out of ply­wood and sanded. The shelf fronts were pegged and glued to the front edge of each panel and sev­eral L-brackets installed to help sup­port them. A brace was added to the under­side of each shelf near the back to help keep the shelves from warp­ing under weight.

For the doors, all of the frame pieces were care­fully mitered and fit together. The joints were pegged and glued together. The cen­ter panel of each door was cut, glued and clamped in place. I again used wood filler to clean up any small gaps that showed between the mitered joints and between the cen­ter panel and the frame.

Once all of the assem­bly was com­plete every piece was care­fully sanded smooth then cleaned with tack cloth.

The final step in the assem­bly was to add a coat of stain and two coats of high build polyurethane to every part of the cab­i­net and the com­po­nents that would be vis­i­ble once the cab­i­net was installed.

The instal­la­tion of the cab­i­net was actu­ally quite sim­ple. I built braces for the bot­tom of the cab­i­net in the area where it would sit, removed the base­board, slid the cab­i­net into place and fas­tened it, installed the doors and the shelves, replaced the base­board, cut and installed the trim around the cab­i­net and cleaned up. The instal­la­tion took about half an hour to 45 min.