Kitchen Cabinet Building - Should You Try It?
With the upswing in do it yourself activity over the past few years, more and more homeowners are electing to do all or part of the work involved in their kitchen remodeling project themselves. However, while many will get involved in rebuilding their kitchen, very few will even consider doing their own kitchen cabinet building. Even professional builders very rarely construct the cabinets they install. The conventional kitchen renovation plans usually involve purchasing already constructed cabinets and installing those in the new kitchen. However, in certain situations, it makes sense to consider designing and building your own cabinets. Certainly, this route isn't for everyone, but don't reject it out of hand before considering the advantages.
First of all, do it yourself kitchen cabinets mean you can get exactly what you want at a reasonable price. For what you pay someone else for the typical prebuilt cabinet built out of particleboard covered with veneer or melamine, you can build your own solid wood cabinets. When I say "solid wood", I mean real wood, not plywood. Of course, you're free to use plywood for the cost and time savings, but you have the real wood option. Secondly, you can design the cabinets to fit. Regular kitchen cabinets come in sections and you buy enought sections to fill up the kitchen's available space. If you build your own, you can just build one piece to fit exactly. Now, there are a few things to consider before deciding to go ahead with diy kitchen cabinets. First of all, you'll need some place to store the cabinets. Don't plan to build them while you're in the middle of construction. Build them ahead of time. If you don't have the room for all the cabinets, you could remodel your kitchen in stages - building the cabinets for one section, then ripping out and replacing everything in that area. Then you can use the kitchen while you build the next set of cabinets. This is the way I remodeled my small kitchen. Be aware, however, that the total time for construction when proceeding in this manner will be more than if you just rip everything out and replace it all at once. The segmented approach will find you having to take hours to work around things that would take ten minutes to tear out - then you'll eventually remove them anyway. You may think you can't be your own cabinet builder because you don't own a shop full of stationary power tools or have a warehouse to store them in. Maybe, but I live in a condo and built my cabinets mainly with an 18 volt circular saw and drill and a little random orbital sander and no storage space. And I used clear pine to build the entire cabinet, which meant I was usually gluing up boards to make pieces wide enough. If you decide to use plywood, that last step would be eliminated. If you have built bookcases that didn't fall down, you can probably learn how to build your own cabinets with some research and a little practice. After all, the cabinet enclosures are really just boxes. Bookcases are also boxes. The fact that bookcases hold books and cabinets hold food doesn't make the latter any harder. Add doors and/or drawers (more boxes) and you've got what we call cabinets. But the less experience and natural aptitude you have, the more careful you have to be. The boxes need to be square unless you like doors and drawers that don't close or don't open. The carpenter's mantra is "measure twice, cut once". You might wanna upgrade it to "measure three or four times", at least till you get enough experience to be confident in your abilities. My natural aptitude for carpentry is minimal at best, but I make up for it by trying to pay attention and make every measurement and cut perfect. That way, the inevitable errors are usually minimized and inconsequential. You can pick up books and videos that give you an idea of what cabinet building entails. Just don't think you need all the power tools they'll show being used. I think if I was able to build my own cabinetry while living in a condo and having limited skills, just basic portable power tools and no place to store the cabinets, than most people can do the same, IF they really want to. But before you start out on the d-i-y route, make sure you have motivation, patience and some plans or you'll do a crappy job. And I don't want people blaming their crappy kitchens on me :-) |
