Kitchen Island Project #5: Doors are installed

The cabinet doors are now installed. I’ve got to say I love those Blum (European) Hinges. In this case I have inset doors so the gap around the doors is really finicky. The slightest deviation stands out like a K-Mart blue tag special that has a flashing light saying “He screwed up look here!” With the Blum Hingest you can quite literally “dial in” the desired gap and face depth. I also like the fact that the hinges are invisible when the door is closed. The trade-off is that the hinges are a little bulky on the inside but that’s ok because it’s the inside.

I also installed the Soft Self Closing Drawer Slides. They are really nice and super easy to install. I simply cut a 60 mm strip of 3/4” ply as a guide. I set it on the bottom of the drawer space along the side wall where the slide is going, then placed the slide on top. The ply strip temporarily holds the slide in place, nice and square. A few screws and it’s done. The drawer slides will support 100 lbs and they are also self closing. That means you push the drawer most of the way but then in the last 2” it self retracts. Now my kids can’t slam the drawers and they also can’t leave them hanging slightly open.

I made a slight design change today. The face frame was originally to be flat and flush with the inset doors. It was bugging me because it looked like it was too plain and missing something. I installed a 3/4” x 1/4” strip of oak rounded over on the edges along the face frame between the doors and drawers as well as between each of the doors. I thought I would try it to see how it looks and instantly realized this is just what it needed. It gives some depth to the face of the cabinet.

Tomorrow, drawers and drawer faces.

-- Jim Sollows --- Langley BC Canada --- www.sollows.ca