Thursday, April 25, 2013

Cabinet Doors and More

With the cabinet door openings cut, it was time to close them back in by hanging doors- quite of a few of them actually, 10 to be exact.  Shopping door hardware online, I decided on satin nickel hinges and latches like these available from Home Depot:
and:


The hinges are a self closing style, and feature a 3/8" offset to fit to a lip edge style door edge, as depicted in this picture:
 To get to to this point, door face measurements and some woodworking was required.  Each cabinet door was measured about 3/8" larger per side than the door opening to allow for the lip.  Several passes through the table saw, at least two per edge, were required to cut the lip.  With the lip cut around each door face, the hinges could be drilled and mounted.  Attached to the doors, the offset hinges look like this:

With some careful placement, using a punch to set the drill bit center for a pilot hole, each door can be hung on the cabinet face:
and:

To hang the lower rear cabinet doors, some finish work was required on the cabinet edge.  Thinking ahead too, we decided to dry fit the Aquatainer in the lower cabinet space beneath the countertop. If you recall from an earlier post, the goal is to piano hinge the lower cabinet face to enable rear removal of the mattress.  Upon taking a measurement, we realized we had left the cabinet too shallow to accommodate to Aquatainer.  We are realized that the the front edge of the countertop lacked support and rigidity, so we decided to extend and strengthen the countertop with a piece of walnut trim.  Measuring about 3/4" x 1", the walnut was biscuited and glued to the face of the countertop.  In profile, a diagram of this arrangement looks like this:
Attaching the walnut trim, we used a number of clamps to ensure a good, tight fit:
And when assembled, with piano hinge and cabinet doors hung, the lower rear cabinet face looks like this:

Next up, latches.  The latches we selected are a matchbox style, and required a relatively square edge to the cabinet face to allow the latch and the catch faces to butt close enough to each other to allow the latch tongue to engage the catch.  Because of the lip style of the cabinets, the catches need to be raised from the face to meet the face of the doors.  Using some walnut patches, wood glue, and screws, the mounted latches and catches look like this:
and:
and this:
That's it for now.  Next up, cabinet staining, and soon after: electrical, insulation, and doors...