Building Custom Cabinets

Amy Matthews: Custom kitchen cabinets can really booze the value and beauty of your home but custom cabinets can set you back $20,000.00 to $40,000.00. For those of you with a right tools and skills you can save big by building them yourself.

Male: It’s just the materials and the materials for the cabinets are not that expensive.

Amy Matthews: But builder beware. This is a difficult craft.

Male: Making your own cabinet here is very, very difficult if you’re good way of construction and you are carpenter you really know what you’re doing it’s such a great advantage.

Amy Matthews: Here are a few things to consider when building custom kitchen cabinets. First determine a lay out of the new kitchen and take measurements for the cabinets. To account for appliances use a plywood template that is exactly cut to size.

As a cabinet maker you want it filling with pieces that kind of mimic worst things are going to go with the exact measurements. It’s important to make detailed blueprints with the new measurements. Next, the shell of each cabinet is built to sides, this is called the carcass.

Male: It’s a pretty simple box believe it or not there is not a whole lot of wood in there.

Amy Matthews: So there is a few more of this in one’s is packed and it’s secure we can turn our sides to the front and start using the pencil. Once the boxes are assembled face frames are attached to finish the fronts.

Male: Face frame is the one is made up of solid woods so it gives you those nice spirits.

Amy Matthews: Now you can build your doors.

Male: I will be making my own raised panels.

Amy Matthews: A raised panel door requires a special tool called a table top of router.

Amy Matthews: The fact that you have a whole router table as oppose to just a router bit that you would normally use for other projects, this is perfect for making cabinetry. So someone is really going to need one of these if they want to make the doors.

So this is eventually what we were going for here and this is our door front and the top here is our bottom rail, the two side styles. So the top rail fits into the sides file and when I think it’s interesting whatever the style cut is that ends up being the same in the front which is your design.

Male: Yes.

Amy Matthews: Once the doors are sanded it’s time to finish them with stain and sealer. Then each cabinet is glued in place. It’s important to drill into studs for a secure fit and important last step is choosing hardware.

Amy Matthews: They can either make a statement and standout or they can blend in and go away and just tie everything together without being a statement on the road.

Amy Matthews: So with the right skills and two rows you can build the beautiful cabinets for your kitchen. Building custom cabinets is a project most people won’t want to tackle but if you do have the skills set and the tools you could save tens of thousands of dollars. I'm Amy Matthews from DIY Networks Sweat Equity.