DIY Project – Upcycling Our Kitchen Cabinet Doors – The Desk Cabinets – The Wood Parts

I was going to use the miter saw with its new blade to cut the rails and stiles for the doors.  The miter saw would give me clean straight cuts without constantly making adjustments on my table saw.  I made my first cuts on the wider single cabinet door.  I usually draw a full cut line across the board, not just a mark.  I noticed the cut was not parallel with the line.  I originally blew it off, but I rechecked the cuts.  The cuts definitely were not square.

I looked over the miter saw to see if the new blade was causing a problem.  It was not the blade; it was the miter saw table. The lock on the zero-degree setting was broken and the blade was off about a one-half degree.  I needed to recut the rails and stiles for this door.  Like the table saw, I now had something to check on the miter saw before I cut anything.

Using my Kreg® jig, I drilled two holes for each side of the rails.  Learning lessons joining the frames from prior projects, I joint together the stiles and rails on the wider door.  I completed one side of the frame on one of the double doors and something was not right.  The frame was not square.  Not even close.  After a closer work, one of the rail cuts were not square. What?  I looked at the miter saw, and I see that the saw table is again not at zero-degrees. But it was just a sliver off, and I did not think that it would cause this big of a problem.

I will need to re-cut the one bad rail.  I discovered that the one rail must have shifted when I ganged cut all the rails at once on the saw.  It was the top piece, above the back fence and moved when I brought down the saw blade.  I will not do that again.

Since I needed to remove the bad rail, from experience, I could not reuse the screws.  The screws get weakened when used once and re-using the screw will just break the head off.  So, six screws go into the garbage.

I assembled the remaining frames, and I was ready for routing.  Again, with lessons learned, I would do two passes on each door.  Trying to gouge out a 3/8-inch-deep rabbet on one pass would just destroy the frame.  First pass, no problem.  Second pass, big problem.

I set the router bit to complete the 3/8-inch-deep cut.  I ran a test piece and tweaked it a few times to get it exact.  Happy with the test run, I started on my first frame.  With the frame clamped down on the table saw bed, I started the router on the far corner.  As I moved the router along the frame, the router bit went into the miter gauge slot on the table saw bed.  I stopped the router and discovered, (which I should already knew), the router bearing was hitting on the table saw bed.

I placed some wood under all sides of the frame to raise it above the table saw bed.  I restarted routing again.  I moved along the far side of the frame and stopped to turn the frame and complete the other side.  What I saw did not make me happy.  The depth of the cut was about 1/2 inch.

The right thing to do was start over and remake the frame.  Not an option for a just okay DIYer.  I decided that this pair of doors would have a ½ inch inset.  My dilemma was how I would get the hinges to work.

I kept the router as is and continue to route the outside edges of the two doors.  Since the router was already set for the ½ inch depth, I also routed out the inside of the frame for the panel.

After I reset the router to the 3/8” depth, I finished the one single door for the cabinet.

After looking online for hinges with a ½ inch inset, (which I found), I decided to just set the hinges for the double doors 1/8 inch into the back of the frame.  I would need to chisel out the part of the frame where the hinges are attached.

Time to take down the doors and cut the panels, but first, Efiwym and I needed to decide on cabinet hardware…

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