Weekend worrier here (well, retired – so full-time house worrier).
It looks like we’ll be building the cabinets for our bath remodel. The room is tall – 8’8″ – and will have one full height vertical cabinet that combines linen closet and stuff storage. Contemplating rollouts or drawers of various sorts, running on metal slides. Cabinets will be painted.
So: what would be the optimum material for cabinet frames? Would 3/4″ doug fir A/B or similar work? If Baltic birch or similar is better, is this readily and affordable available longer than eight feet?
Bill Houghton
Replies
Don't worry.
While longer ply is available, it probably isn't necessary for the situation you describe.
Typically a cabinet for an 8' space is quite a few inches less than 8' so it shouldn't matter; in your case, just build an 8' tall cabinet then jack it up or trim down to it.
The leftover space is covered by crown molding and base molding. In your instance, I would probably use a 4" to 6" built up crown molding; usually a 4" crown attached to a piece of flat stock, attached to the cabinet. The more build-up, the easier to hide any ceiling discrepancies.
If you have base mold that you absolutely must match, but isnt tall enough to cover a gap then you might need to break out the Bondo. Fortunate for you it's all getting painted.
3/4" AB fir is usually not very flat and couldn't be used without being held flat by a face frame and back panel. It is also rather rough as compared to birch ply. Birch ply usually splinters less when cut and takes nails and screws better than fir.
Good luck
DC
if you were to build an 8'6 cabinet you better build it in place or you will never get it in the room and stood up
most of the veneer ply I have been getting lately measures 97 x 49. I believe its an asian thing.
I thought the extra inch was so that you could square the sheet up before using it? I know that MDF usually comes in 49x97 sheets, though I've yet to run across one that wasn't square. It is nice to have some extra to shave off the bunged edges and paint marks. Z
I thought the inch was to compensate for blade thickness. As in - what do you get when you cut a 48x96 sheet into usable quarters?DC
I don't think I've ever been able to fully use a 4x8' sheet as such. Maybe it's because in an old house no measurement divides evenly into 48" or 96". When doing my cabinets, I found Cutlist (http://www.delphiforfun.org/programs/cutlist.htm) to be really useful for breaking down sheet goods. That, a track saw and story sticks for the most common cabinet measurements are the most useful things I found when building mine. Also not using two different tape measures ;) Have to rebuild my first series of cabinets thanks to that novice mistake.Z