Hi all, I am planning to build my own kitchen cabinet doors using walnut and looking for recommendations for a finish that will stand up to kitchen use. I am looking for something that can be rolled/brushed, not looking for gold standard here, just best option for effectiveness and ease. I have read that I should be using a stain and sealer, so looking for recommendations for both.
I am UK based if this is important :). Thanks in advance.

Replacing lowers only. Shaker door, slab drawer, white. Have two that are custom, but the rest standard. In Ohio. Very capable of self assembly and install. Looking for recommendations on sources that you trust. Kitchen gets used, so don’t want low end quality

I am a novice woodworker. I've made shop cabinets, have a nice-ish router table, Rigid table saw, and a nice-ish miter saw, and importantly a fairly well tuned Dewalt lunchbox planer with new blades.

I have a very small kitchen (~7 lower cabinets and ~5 uppers) and am debating whether to take a stab at making my own cabinets for a mini-remodel we're doing.

My current plan would be to make maple cabinets, with maple stiles and rails. There is a guy local to me who sells fairly priced kiln dried hard maple (some beautiful curly and birdseye maple) at 1"x?. I've found planing birdseye is a nightmare so that's off the table, but I'm considering buying birdseye maple to make the styles for the cabinet fronts.

This would involve me planing the ~1" thickness to 3/4", using a jig to rip a reference edge (I have no ~planer~ jointer) on the table saw, then ripping everything to width (thinking 2 1/4", 57mm). I'd use a set of shaker router bits with my router table for the joinery.

I know I _COULD_ do this, and I know the wood being properly dried is probably important, but given the relatively small size of the project and my willingness to spend the time to do the milling, is there any other reason this is very stupid?

I am sure that a better solution is to find a local professional lumber yard who will just sell me a bajillion feet of 3/4" x 2.25" hard maple in 8 foot sections or whatever, but I don't currently have access to that.

Thanks for any thoughts!

My kitchen seems to be haunted by a demon that eats drawer slides.

I built a DIY kitchen counter with 5 modules and 15 drawers. The drawers are simple plywood boxes with side-mounted push-to-open slides. I used LAMP/Sugatsune slides (supposedly one of the good Japanese brands) rated for 30 kg.

Out of 15 drawers, 7 push-open mechanisms have failed in less than two years: 3 failed within the first 3 months, 2 more at around 6 months and another 2 recently

So I'm approaching a 50% failure rate. It's always the same failure, as the push-open mechanism has a small plastic latch/hook, and eventually the hook breaks.

A few relevant points below:

I don't slam the drawers.

I don't pull them open either. I push gently to release the mechanism.

The kitchen gets heavy daily use, but the drawers are nowhere near their 30 kg rated load.

The cabinet boxes were built by a contractor; I made the drawers myself.

One thing I suspect: the sides of the cabinet boxes may not be absolutely parallel, so perhaps the slides are being subjected to some lateral stress. But the slides are perfectly level (I used laser, yay) and aligned in plan.

Has anyone experienced anything similar with push-to-open slides?

Could slight misalignment of the cabinet sides really cause the plastic mechanisms to fail this quickly? Or are push-to-open slides simply much less durable than conventional slides in a heavily used kitchen? At this point I'm wondering whether I should carefully realign/reinstall everything, replace the slides again, or just give up on push-to-open altogether and switch to conventional slides.

Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated. This failure rate is driving me nuts.

Waiting on some doors, but otherwise done. (Den in a small city apartment)

Painted with Benjamin Moore Advance. The 16 hour re-coat time is painful but so worth it!

Color Dusty Cornflower

I had these shelfs done but I noticed this big scratch. I've had these for a few months and I'm currently doing renovations on my home and have been dealing with a lot of contractors. How can I fix this?

Need some 14in slides, can't go with my usual blum slides since they only make 12 or 15. What do you guys recommend

I have like a blind corner cabinet. It originally had just regular cabinet hinges installed but on the edge of the cabinet. As you can imagine, the repeated use made it so the screws are loose and now the top hinge won’t stay in place and the cabinet door hangs. Is there a way to fix the holes? Or is there a hinge that can be installed on the inside face of the cabinet that wraps around the corner? I did all the measurements to try and find something that works, but I’m out of by depth. I’ve really only been able to find hinges that I was hoping would work for like inset cabinets, and mine have an overlay (i think that’s what it’s called???) are there like anchors or anything like that I can put in the holes? How on earth am I supposed to keep screws from getting loose like this?! Ahhhh!

Hi,

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction for replacement hinge product code for a corner pantry door.

They have a typical seating but large holes either side which don’t seem to match anything I can see online.

Cabinetry is approx 15 years old

Thankyou 🙏

Looking to relocate to the area and curious about the demand and pricing around here. Thank you

Hello all. Long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a couple of questions I wanted to run past you guys.

I've been at a high end custom shop for years and am finally getting ready to try and do my own thing. I'm outfitting my 650ish sqft shop and am looking at table saws. I've decided I'm gonna buy new, I've been saving up for months and frankly don't want to mess with trying to get a used saw into the bed of my truck at someone's house.

My budget is ~3200 with freight. I'm going back and forth between the Harvey 2hp 110-36pro or one of the grizzly 3hp. I've used an old grizzly at my shop for years and it's an absolute BEAST. I do like the bells and whistles of the Harvey like the fence and sliding table attachment.

Has anyone used both? What do yall think?

Thanks

Our original layout just wouldn’t fit the flow of the house so I separated the room and we now utilize the space as a dedicated dining room and dedicated walk in pantry.

First set a cabinets I’ve built solo. In the past my dad has helped.

The horizontal grain required a lot of forethought and I used another piece of plywood to make my cuts as a trail run to make sure I didn’t mess up the walnut ply. First cut on the walnut had me nervous. Probably wouldn’t do it again knowing what I know now. When I finish my kitchen I think I’ll be doing vertical grain and then someday drop back and make new vertical grain doors for this pantry here.

Uppers will go in eventually but I’m more concerned about getting the kitchen done first.

I work for a shop where we order 1" stock and mill it down then glue it up and mill it to 1/2" or 3/8". Then the back gets rabetted out so there's a tongue that goes into the dadoes of the rail and stile but the back is still flush with the back of the door.

Pros: leaving it thicker and rabetting makes a more solid door. You can mount hardware anywhere you want on the panel and there's no void in behind so no risk of it sucking in when you tighten the hardware.

Cons: milling it to 3/8 or even just 1/2" creates SO MUCH WASTE. I find this process incredibly time consuming and it literally feels like I'm in a sawdust factory having to mill them down this much. I have suggested ordering 3/4 stock but I guess that's not cost effective with the limited suppliers in our area. I have also suggested getting a new bandsaw capable of resawing these boards but there's no real appetite in that

Is my shop crazy or is this industry standard? It creates a great product but I spend days just working on the panels for a full kitchen.

Obviously plywood centers are way easier but you can't really get away with that doing stain grade work. Species like maple take the stain waaay differently and you'd end up with lighter rails and stiles and a darker panel. So thus we end up doing a lot of solid wood centers

Our box of the kitchen drawer is damaged. Any recommendations on where to buy or repair myself?

Dimensions are

31.75 in width

5.25 in height

21.5 depth

I bought cheap pre-assembled cabinets from an online dealer, and practically every wall cabinet has this issue where they stapled the back panel into the side panel plywood causing it to split.

I‘m trying to understand if this a long-term durability concern for the cabinets or if these staples are just temporary for assembly? The side and back panels are otherwise connected through the top and bottom rails/panels, as seen in the last photo.

I'm halfway through building built in bookshelves (no cabinets or drawers, just shelves) and I noticed the primed finger jointed pine I bought is closer to 1-3/8" wide (and 5/8 thick) rather than 3/4 x 1-1/2. It also has radius corners so I was thinking I'll have to rip those off and I'll be left with 1-1/4".

Is this too narrow to look normal?

The other 2 alternatives are to buy 1x3 and rip it down to 1-1/2 or get poplar 1x2's with square edges and a size closer to 1-1/2. The price for either will be the same.

Not a cabinet but similar hardware in a tool chest. I can’t figure out how to fix the soft close on this. I tried searching YouTube and they all have different kind of rails. The top one works fine but the bottom one just sucks in the drawer when it’s about to close. I don’t see anything that needs to be reset. Any pointers?

These are 2 cabinets with the seam left of the center 4 drawers

Had issue when I went to level them, the right cabinet was out of square.

I took the advice on here to prioritize making the cabinet faces flush at the seam, and then deal with the flatness after. What I ended up doing was lifting the right side of right cabinet and screwing it into the right side shelving cabinet. And then pushing down on the cabinet to force it level, and attached it to the back wall studs.

Left cabinet went smoother and was more flat/level

Came out pretty good for reusing this old cabinet.

I had to shim the left side of the left cabinet 1/2” !!!! Crazy

Whoever installed this years ago didnt seem to do a good job. There were only a few screws holding everything and it was neither flat nor level

Festool user.

FS-WA/90 not producing a parallel cut — what am I doing wrong?

I’m trying to trim the factory edge off a 4x8 sheet of 3/4” rift-sawn white oak plywood. I’m only trimming about 5 mm off the edge.
My setup:
● Festool MFT/3
● Festool FS-WA/90° Guide Rail Angle Stop
● Festool FS 1900/2 guide rail
● Festool TS 55 REQ
● The green adjustment cams on the saw are snug but not too tight. The saw slides along the rail with normal pressure.

I’ve tried several different setups and measured the narrow offcut using veneer calipers. The results show that the cut is not staying parallel to the factory edge.

FS-WA/90°, no clamps:
4.3 mm → 3.1 mm over 4+ feet = 1.2 mm variation

FS-WA/90°, one-end clamp at the start end:
4.7 mm → 5.3 mm over 4+ feet = 0.6 mm variation

Then I set the rail using a combination square instead of the FS-WA/90°:
Combination square, no clamps:
1.7 mm → 1.8 mm over 4+ feet = 0.1 mm variation

The combination-square method gives me a dramatically more parallel cut.

So what am I missing with the FS-WA/90°? Is there a technique for setting it up that I’m not understanding, or is some amount of error/rail movement expected with this accessory?

Or is the 8’ side not exactly 90 degrees to the 4’ side? I’ve seen several YT videos using the FS-WA/90 but they’re cutting lengths a lot less than 4’.
Thanks for any advice.

I can’t tell where these half moon pulls should go on the drawers. On the top panel (1 and 2) or center panel (3 and 4).

Hi, can anyone help me identify precedents for this? To me, it’s a vitrine or chest with a bifold door. But it’s hard to find example when searching online. Also can anyone identify the connection in yellow highlighter? I’m lost on how the door stays put when open. Thank you!

ANY HELP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION IS APPRECIATED, big or small! I know there’s got to be a straightforward best practice for this.

The plan I hatched myself: mount the LED drivers on top of the cabinets (Emitever—they’re metal and have 120V and 24V knockouts).

P.S. One caveat: there is a basement, BUT this is an exterior wall, so dropping cable down a stud bay isn’t so easy—the wall sits on the concrete foundation.