Kitchen Cabinets: Cheaper to Build or Buy? | I Like To Make Stuff

Hi, I'm Bob and I like to do things today. I want to know if it is worth it to

make

your own

kitchen

cabinets

. Over the past two weeks, we completely ripped out my

kitchen

and rebuilt it to a blank. Now is the time. To work on the

cabinets

, we made a Fusion 360 model of the entire space to try to visualize what it would look like where things were going to go, but eventually you have to come to the real world, so I started putting down some masking tape. on the walls to determine where the appliances go and then we're going to work the cabinets around those kind of fixed points, so we also have some masking tape on the floor here, where I measured and marked the actual cabinet. sizes that fit in all these spaces now I can

make

things for a living so I have the opportunity to make these cabinets myself but in this video I want to help you figure out whether or not that's worth it for you there are tons There are a lot options for this process, but we need to establish some ground rules so that we can determine if it is really worth it or not.

One is the scale of the room. If you have a small room with two cabinets, it's probably best to buy a few. because that will be quicker and easier and not as expensive, but if you have a very large kitchen, making them yourself can save you a lot of money or maybe not, we will find that the other thing is the tools that you really need. making the cabinets there are tons of different ways to

build

a cabinet, but you need a few essentials, you need to be able to cut a straight line, drill a hole, and probably sand a piece of wood, so at a minimum you'll get these three tools.

Now of course the table saw will do it much faster, easier and more precise but therein lies the problem, there are several ways to do it and each of these tools can have a different cost and hopefully you are using these tools. for other projects too, so we'll leave the cost of tools out of this whole equation and let you decide that part for yourself, of course there are a million different ways to do this, but we'll cover four different ones. The to see if the DIY option is worth it the first is completely personalized, this is when you hire a kitchen designer, they come to your house, you tell them what you want and then they figure it all out, they leave, They make some cabinets, they come back.

Set them up and all you have to do is hand them a very big check and I mean very big, it's extremely expensive but you don't have to do anything. The next option is semi-custom, semi-custom could mean many different things. things, imagine you go to Ikea, you walk around and look at the different styles that you like, you choose the different pieces that you want and you make a package with those options or you go to a big box store, someone who works there in the kitchen. The showroom will help you design the kitchen usually for free or you can use their online tools.

Many of the big box stores will have online tools that allow you to design and choose a complete kitchen without the need for 3D modeling, which can be really useful regardless. Which of these options you choose with the quality of cabinet you'll get from the semi-custom option is still a pretty big range, but it will probably be much better than what's off the shelf and what's out of the box. I mean literally taking a cabinet in a box off the shelf, taking it home, and putting it in your kitchen. This is a fantastic option, but you don't have as many customization options because they are usually pretty generic, you can usually have them finished or unfinished.

But beyond that, you don't have much control over how they end up looking, as I mentioned before, if you have a small space that you're trying to fill, this might be the option you want to go for, but we're going to go DIY, even inside. From that you have a ton of options, you can

build

the boxes and buy the doors, you can buy the boxes and build the doors or any combination, let's jump right in and build a really simple cabinet box, so you can see how easy it is when you make your cabinets to measure.

You don't have to follow conventions. You can make them as deep or as shallow as you want, but whatever size you decide on, you want to make sure they are. the same thing between all of your cabinets so they line up correctly to do this, I actually measured one side panel and then put a piece of tape exactly where I want that line to be on my table saw so I have somewhere to always go Back a and it will be exact, you don't want any variation between these to make the casings. I'm using maple plywood, it's nice, solid and attractive and you can use anything here, but this is what I decided to use for mine, so let's go. cut them into some side panels, we'll go from there.

I cut out these side panels and only had a little left over after cutting four of them from a single sheet of plywood. Now I wanted to point this out, typically base cabinets are 24 inches deep if you add that plus the width of the three cuts you have to make in the blade there shouldn't be anything left over in fact your pieces should be a a little short, but I decided to make all of these 23. and 7 8 to be a little short and I can add a piece of homemade edging to the front face to cover the plywood and also give a hardwood face to the front of all the cabinets, so I went ahead and ripped these strips down to an eighth of an inch and then we took that eighth of the depth of the cabinet.

Next we're going to cut some slots in the side panels that we just cut and that slot is going to accept the bottom panel so it's going to slide into the side panel so it's nice and strong, we'll also glue and screw it but we need to cut those slots and since I'm working with all three-quarter inch material, the slot should be three-quarters of an inch thick and it should be half the thickness of the material deep, so I'm going to take three-eighths of an inch here, which is half three quarters, and I'll set the depth of the slotting blade so you always want to rotate the blade just to make sure. that reaches the highest point for the teeth now that we have the correct depth we need to make sure that the distance between that slot and the bottom of the panel is the toe let's talk about that so the toe on a cabinet It's a place for your toe to go at the bottom of the front and is usually about four inches from the bottom three and a half inches.

Those numbers depend on what you want to do, but that's what I'm going to do. mine, so I want to make sure that the bottom panel is four inches from the bottom and that will also give me the area where the toe will be, so we're going to measure the side of the sheet at four inches to make sure Make sure the toe area is here, then we'll cut the slot. If your table saw doesn't support a stack of slots, if you're in Europe or something, you'll probably want to do the exact same process with a router. and a little bit it's going to take a little bit more work, although there are a couple more things here at this stage, if you want to add some fixed shelves you can go ahead and cut a few more slots here to put shelves in.

Actually, we're going to I'll be assembling an oven in this, so I need to cut another shelf in two of these pieces and I wanted to point out that I chose the nicer side of the two sides to cut these slots, that's because I'm not going to finish. Paint the inside of my cabinets so the inside here is where the shelf will be. You're going to see this more so I want to make sure I have the pretty side but the ugly side on the outside another option if not I don't want to make this cutout for the foot kick since you could actually make a two by four frame on the floor, then make a simple box and place it on top and then hang in front to nail the foot kick area.

I'm trying to avoid the trash can. Yes, great, I cut the sides. I cut the bottom panel and three stringers. I go ahead and do this every time just to make sure they are all cut at the same time and to the same width. and that's because I'm going to need one at the top of the back, one at the top of the front and one further down. Now I wanted to point out that I have a little method for measurements here. I have my main outside measurement. and then I remove 3 8 and 3 8 which are three quarters and that tells me where the inside piece should be which gives me the measurement for that, then I remove another 3 8 and another 3 8 and that gives me the width for Actually, I did a little graph with the stringers because then I won't forget what number I'm working on, so I have my outside dimension, I take off three quarters of an inch to give me the floor and then I take off another three quarters. of inch to give me the stringers before I start cutting, I write all these numbers here based on the outside dimension and then we can start cutting and not worry when I'm laying them out because my table isn't perfectly smooth.

I line up the front faces and put a little nail in here just to hold it there and then I'll go back and screw it in so it's nice and strong. This is your basic shell. Now it's just a simple box but this is the point where you can decide how you want these cabinets to look in the future, there are two main types that you will see framed and frameless, now by frame I mean building a front frame that It goes in front of this and that will give it dimension when you look at it from the front, you can make it with any material you want and any thickness you want, but that will limit the size of the opening that is inside this cabinet and if you decide that you might want have a drawer up here and doors.

Down here you want to build the face frame between them to fill the space in the future. If you decide you want to change that orientation, you'll have to change the frame as well, but we've decided to go frameless, which means we're not going to put that face frame on, we're just going to cover this plywood with the edge banding I talked about. before, we'll put it in and then when we build the doors and the drawer faces, those are I'm going to go almost all the way, called a full overlap to the outside edge, leaving a little gap between two cabinets.

When I nailed them in, I actually lined them up on the inside with just a slight overhang that you can sand off and the excess comes on the outside so you can trim it off easier. Last thing, if you wanted to add a kick here just for added strength, you could put another stringer there. We're actually going to hide some storage under the cabinets. there, so I'm not going to do that. The last thing I do on the casing before I'm done is fill all of these little holes with some wood filler. I'm going to end up painting this front face and then clear-coating the inside so I don't mind that these are different wood species, but if you're going to stain or clear-coat everything, you might want to try matching the species here. and here so that everything looks the same.

I finished I collected all the corpses for that island wall. I still have everything to do, but it's more of the same. I took everything outside and sprayed the inside of all of them with a coat of polyurethane just to protect them. Actually, there are only two. these will have doors, everything else will have drawers, so you won't interact much with the interior. Speaking of the drawers, I have a bunch of these to build and the way I did it. To keep track of all the measurements, I measured the actual inside of each of these areas and then came up with a labeling system.

I labeled each shell with a letter number and then the inside will be one, two, three, so all the parts for this. The drawers are labeled F1, this is F2, etc. I have so many to build that this will help me keep track and separate all the pieces. Okay, let's go to the store and start making some drawers before we do that, though let me show you this. cabinet, this one was made for the sink and is a little different than everything else. We have a large farmhouse sink that is going to be quite heavy, so we had to support the weight underneath.

We have two intersecting ledgers. the sides are 2x4 and then also pieces that carry that weight right all the way down to the ground so this one is a lot more structural than everything else just to take the weight into account, it also has a cutout in the back to that we can slide it around the plumbing, but know that there are some cases where you will have to build a special cabinet for a certain situation, there are a few different ways to build drawers, I don't. I'm going to review it in depth because there are a million videos about it.

I'll just show you what I did. I'm using three-quarter inch plywood for all the exterior walls and then the bottoms of the drawers are really different depending on what it is. I'm going to go into the drawer and the overall size of it, most of them have half inch plywood bottoms, there are some that have a quarter inch and that's usually for the shorter drawers just to save a little space , I made a slot to match the thickness of the bottom on each of these pieces and then I have somepocket holes on the end so you just glue and screw this whole thing together.

Voila, I put this one together and have a pair. There's more to do, so we're going to spray polyurethane on all of these inside and out and then mount them to the drawer slides. We are overlapping doors and drawer fronts completely so I want to make sure these are assembled before measuring and placing them to make sure we can achieve the gaps between all of them. Same after about two and a half weeks, this is the last of the lower cabinets we have to put in and this is the first of the upper cabinets, this giant thing is going to go on top of it, they are going to be pushed into place and then the only case I have left is one to build connecting this to the which is on the other side of the refrigerator now let me tell you after two and a half weeks one of the most important things I have learned about making cabinets is that it is very repetitive and very exhausting, so when you think about whether you want to do this for yourself, you should Keeping that in mind, it's fun at first and then it gets a little old, I finally understood it all.

Of the drawers I've made so far on slides are installed, which is a little tedious when there are a ton of them to make, but it's not difficult, it just takes a little time. I also added a couple of foot drawers. Now these use a special type of drawer slide that has a little spring on the end so when you push it it releases and then pushes the thing out so with your foot you can open them and close them and you can use them for small things . Storage maybe for pans or something. We've put three of those in the kitchen so far.

We are finally ready to start making some drawer fronts and some doors for all the cabinets we have been building and that I am going to make. this in a shaker style and that means you have some rails on the top and sides and then an inset panel. I'm going to use maple for the rails because they're going to take a beating and I want the maple, hopefully to make them last a little longer, the panel insert will be a quarter inch MDF that will paint nicely and should be fine once Even though all this is painted, you won't be able to tell that they are different. materials, so to make these I get a set of router bits, these are matching bits with two different profiles, so you go through all the pieces to get this particular profile, then you go through the ends of two of the pieces to add this little tenon so you can put the four pieces together, let me show you what I'm talking about.

I already went through all the parts to get this profile and they are using this first part. Now I'm going to take these pieces and run them. Pass them through the other part to add the tenon to the sides and then we can join them together. I've already done several tests on this and ran into several problems, so I had to redo the parts when you pass these parts. On these really big parts, there's a lot of chance for things to chip and explode, so I've noticed that you should definitely put a backing piece behind these pieces as you go so that the back of them doesn't break off. it bursts and you end up with a cleaner cut.

There are still many things that can go wrong using such a large drill bit. You have to be very careful and take your time. Here's an example of one of the little things that can cause a problem. you just have to fix that later when I got into the part it came down a little bit before it hit the bearing so I have this little notch in this and it will be on the face of the door. I'm going to have to fill it with wood filler, it'll be fine, but it's an extra step you have to do.

You can avoid this by simply being very, very careful and taking your time with the router. Now I'm going to try to mount them on these drawers that I made and I had to fill in the back a little bit with an extra panel because I know that eventually I'm going to put a handle on here that I'm going to need. to screw this in and I want a gap behind it, so that's something I'll have to figure out for the rest of these before I move forward, but to attach them I'm going to put some double sided tape on. the drawer, mount these properly on that tape, then push them out and put some screws in, okay, so that's the first one and I'm just going to put two screws in for now because I'm going to have to remove them and paint them eventually.

I'm going to go ahead and add these two, but I don't think I need to finish the rest so I can give you my opinion on whether this was worth it or not, obviously I have a lot more things to do and I have a lot of paint and all that , but now I have enough information to give you my opinion on whether it is worth it to make your own kitchen cabinets. There are three things I want to talk about and I think you. You'll have to internalize it for yourself because those will be different for you than they are for me now, as I mentioned before, I can do this for a living so I have the opportunity to make them and turn them into a piece of content that I hope is valuable for you and for it to work in my favor and that's not necessarily the case for everyone right now.

There is one thing I want to point out before we get into this. I'm tired. I've been working more than full time. This kitchen for several weeks now requires a lot of work and I want to point out that I don't want to sweep that under the rug and let you think this is super easy, it takes a lot of work, but there are three big ones. Things that I think are really important, the first one is whether you want to do this or not, there are a lot of people who just aren't interested in making their own cabinets, but then there are people like me who just want to do it and have done it.

Honestly, that counts for a lot to me, that's the most important thing, if you can afford to do it well, if you want to do it, then you should do it. The second thing we need to talk about is money and this may be the most important thing for you, but honestly, I don't think it is the most important factor. We'll get to that in a minute. At the beginning of this process, we went to one of the big box stores, took our plan and they gave us a quote. I'm not doing exactly this, but essentially the same thing I already built here.

The quote was more than fourteen thousand dollars. Now I still have work to do. I still have some materials to buy, but so far I've spent forty two hundred dollars. Everything you see here, so you have a savings of around ten thousand dollars, even with the extra things I have to spend, it is a big deal and if that is your main concern, then you will definitely save money if you build them yourself, but also your time. It's valuable now no matter what you do What kind of family situation you're in Your time is one of the most valuable things you have in this life It's finite It's important and it should be really valuable to you So you have to choose where to spend that time and if spending that time building a kitchen is something you'll enjoy, something you find valuable, then you should definitely do it, but if you're going to have to work for it. spend all your extra time making a kitchen just to save a little money.

Honestly, I don't think it's worth it now that I've enjoyed this process. I have learned a lot from it and I am again in the amazing position where I can share this with you and make it part of my job, but if I had to do this only in the evenings and weekends or take time off work to making this kitchen, it wouldn't be worth it. money that I was saving instead of someone else doing it, so at the end of the day it's all about priorities, if your priorities are just saving money this is probably not the way to do it, it's going to be a lot of work and not necessarily You're going to enjoy the whole process if your priority is to build something and really get involved and learn along the way.

This is a fantastic project. Your priorities are different than mine and they are different than other people who are watching. this video, so you need to take all this information and anything else you can find online, work together, create your own equation and determine if it's worth it for you now if you want to see how the rest of these cabinets turn out. with the rest of the kitchen because we still have a lot of things to do. Make sure to check out the upcoming videos because we have a lot of exciting things coming up. We also have tons of other types of videos that you might want to check out and if you're not subscribed, make sure you do that too.

That's all for this thanks for watching, see you next time. There are others where everything else is that is not really ready. I clip it every time you say ready ready ready ready ready ready ready ready all good ready ready ready ready ready ready ready ready ready ready all good ready yes hello hello neighbor