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The 2018 Fine Homebuilding House has a lot of storage—all of it cabinet-based. There are no closets in the bedrooms. Instead, cabinets are used to create built-in storage. There are also kitchen cabinets, a wall of storage cabinets and drawers running the width of the house along the front-entry hallway, and more storage in the mudroom. To simplify all of the ordering and installation of these cabinets, Mela and David relied on CabParts in Grand Junction, Colorado. They ordered all of the cabinet boxes and drawer parts from CabParts, as well as most doors and drawer fronts. But in situations where they had a special piece of locally milled wood, they could fabricate doors, end panels, and drawer fronts for the boxes.
The CabParts cabinets are shipped in flat packs and clearly labelled. When every room has several cabinet boxes, and some rooms have a dozen or more, it’s much easier to manage on-site storage with flat boxes than with fully built cabinets. It’s also easy to move them around the site without damage to the cabinets or walls. Cabinet boxes are available in both dowel-and-glue and Confirmat screw formats.
All-plywood boxes (including the back) make for a rigid box. The insides of the cabinets are all prefinished.
Kitchen cabinets are assembled and in place. The hardwood drawers are dovetailed. For these cabinets, Mela’s dad, Dan Guyer, will make the drawer fronts and end panels from wood that he milled.
The mix of cabinet styles is visible through the kitchen: black oak for the kitchen cabinets in the foreground, painted Shaker style at the back left, painted full-overlay doors around the fridge, and plywood paneling visible in the background.
Setting all of the cabinet boxes along the front-entry hallway. Lots of storage here!
The Euro-style, full-overlay doors from the supplier match the modern plywood paneling in some other areas of the house.
Install necessities: Some Titebond glues, a tape measure, a binder of cabinet locations, a bucket of shims, and some screws.
Titebond’s Instant Bond wood adhesive is handy for cabinet assembly, including applications like these fastening backers.
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