Building Cabinets Out Of Plywood

Solid wood of choice for the face frame door frame and drawer.

Building cabinets out of plywood.

To frame out the cabinets secure 8 foot 2x4s perpendicular at 36 across and 60 across. In the interest of cost i m building my shop doors out of plywood with a decorative pine frame over them for strength and rigidity. Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation. Plywood or a solid wood panel for the door panels.

Cabinet doors can be ordered in a variety of styles and in increments as small as 1 16 in. Cut plywood to make the doors to fit these openings. You ll find many door makers online search for buy cabinet doors. The sample base and wall cabinets shown below have these features to make building them as simple as possible.

You can build these using cheaper sanded pine plywood expensive pre finished hardwood plywood or anything in between. Birch purebond plywood full sheets are best but 2 8 sheets would work as well. Build the upper cabinets with the same techniques and materials used for the uprights. Unless you have unlimited free time consider building your cabinets but buying your doors.

Plywood for the side panels bottoms and any other structural piece that won t be seen. This will give you two 3 feet wide cabinets on the ends and a 2 foot wide cabinet in the middle. Instead of installing upper cabinets you could simply run a long shelf across the tops of the upright cabinets. Birch purebond plywood full sheets are best but 2 8 2 4 or 4 4 sheets would work as well.

Begin with the right cabinet dimensions. Face frames cover plywood edges. Build the front of the frame in the same pattern as the back 8 feet wide and 8 feet tall. As the trend toward european style frameless cabinets continues to grow many cabinet builders are discovering that the composite plywood they ve been using to build framed cabinets isn t quite doing the job as well as it should.

The doors i will be building the doors next week for the cabinets here s the plan. The 3 4 plywood case eliminates panel jointing planing and glue ups. Material lists for cabinets can vary from cabinet to cabinet depending on size and style but for a generic list you will need the following. These doors won t win style points but will keep out the dust and clean up the overall look of the shop.

Plywood won t shrink and expand like regular solid wood making it ideal for not only the cabinet carcass itself but the shelving within. Plywood makes great shelves because it s very sturdy and stable. It s always nice to be able to see and touch so check out your local cabinet shop as. Hickory 2 4 purebond plywood panels.