My wife and I have talked on and off about upgrading the cabinet doors. Since we recently replaced our kitchen appliances, it seemed appropriate to change out the cabinet doors. I checked out pricing to get replacement doors and because I am cheap, I decided to make the doors myself.
(I would like to give my wife a name. “My wife” is so impersonal. Let me call her, Efiwym, E-fi-wym.)
Just to give you some insight, we purchased our house over 30 years ago. The house had these oak veneer cabinet doors with vertical v-groove lines to jazz them up. I have hated these doors since we bought the house.
After it was decided I would upgrade the cabinet doors, Efiwym and I talked about the “how.” I told her I would use the cabinet doors as panels for a shaker cabinet door. The backside of the doors were flush without any v-groove lines. I would just cut the door down to fit and use the backside as the front of the panel. I would purchase 1” x 3” oak boards for the frame of the doors.
Again, I got that “puzzled” look. She suggested to just apply the frame to the backside of the door and create a faux paneled door. Wow, that was a great idea. At the time, it appeared to be less work. That was now the plan.
After trips to two home improvement stores, I discovered that 1/4” x 3” oak stock was limited. Also, all the cabinet door hinges would need to be replaced. I discovered that the size of the hinge I needed was not available. I will not bore you with the why, but trust me, the hinges are not available.
Disappointed, now it was back to the original plan. So how was I going to make these doors?
My initial idea was to make the paneled doors using my table saw. I could make the tongues and grooves to get the panel and frames to fit. I was a little tentative considering this method. My table saw works okay. It was given to me for free. It has issues. Like when you move the rip guide, you always need to check it for squareness. A cut takes an additional 5 minutes just to set up the saw. The belt pulley also falls off; however, I think I finally got that fixed.
Then there was the Kreg® jig.
I shared with Efiwym my excitement of purchasing a Kreg® jig to make the door frames. I watched a Youtube video and I was going to use the Kreg® jig to make these doors. For those that do not know what a Kreg® jig is, it is a vise-type device that clamps a board in place and allows you to drill an angled hole to screw the boards together. The jig comes with a special drill bit and you need to order the special screws and plugs to cover the hole.
I wanted to buy a Kreg® jig for over 20 years since a co-worker talked about how he used this “Craig” thing to build his kitchen cabinets. Now I finally had a reason.
We decided to start in our master bathroom and replace the two cabinet doors and sink panel. These doors were my first trial run. Since the cabinet is in our bathroom, few people would ever see my screw ups.
I went to my local home improvement store and purchased the necessary 1” x 3” and 1” x 6 red oak boards, the Kreg® jig, special screws, oak plugs, 3/8” router bit, 10” finishing saw blade and a plastic tarp.
Even though I was eager to start, I waited to the following day to set up my work area in the basement. I stapled the plastic tarp around my table saw to keep the saw dust to about a 10-foot by 10-foot area. I laid out all the tools that I would need, and I replaced the saw blade on my table saw.
I took all the measurements of the door and sink panel. From those measurements, I determined the size of the rails, stiles and panels. Now it was time to measure and cut. I did not want to screw this up, so I checked my calculations at least three times. I also checked my measurements multiple times. “Measure twice, or 5 or 6 times, cut once or twice, if you did not cut near the cut line.
Let this DIY project begin…