I've got a prospective client I'm trying to help out.
Long story but original cabinet guy charged them $350,000 for cabinets and was supposed to be done in July. All the boxes are in and some trim but the overall workmanship is pretty bad. On the rooms that do have some doors on the gaps are all over the place from 1/16 to 3/8. He said it wasn't possible to do 1/8" reveals every where so he's done because the clients have unrealistic expectations. They are actually very reasonable in my opinion to expect some high quality since they are spending the price of a pretty nice home just on cabinets.
I think the main reason he didn't finish the doors is he made some small mock ups that they liked but he couldn't figure out how to actually make the doors.
In the master bath and a couple of other bathrooms they want fluted doors and drawers fronts out of alder. His sample is solid wood glued to 1/2" OSB. The front looks good, but I'm concerned with gluing solid wood onto something that doesn't move. Also how would you cover the edges?
Another issue is lining up the vertical fluted drawers with the tall doors above and getting the profile on the edges to be the same on both sides and flow evenly onto the drawer stack beside the tall cabinets.
I also really like how the horizontal drawer dividers don't line up.
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I suggested possibly painting the doors, then I could just route the flutes on the CNC out of 7/8" or 1" MDF and that would solve most of the issues.
Any ideas on how to make fluted doors and drawers out of alder that won't crack and looks good on the sides would be great.
Sorry for the long winded post.
a couple more pictures of the quality workmanship...
![Image]()
![Image]()
Long story but original cabinet guy charged them $350,000 for cabinets and was supposed to be done in July. All the boxes are in and some trim but the overall workmanship is pretty bad. On the rooms that do have some doors on the gaps are all over the place from 1/16 to 3/8. He said it wasn't possible to do 1/8" reveals every where so he's done because the clients have unrealistic expectations. They are actually very reasonable in my opinion to expect some high quality since they are spending the price of a pretty nice home just on cabinets.
I think the main reason he didn't finish the doors is he made some small mock ups that they liked but he couldn't figure out how to actually make the doors.
In the master bath and a couple of other bathrooms they want fluted doors and drawers fronts out of alder. His sample is solid wood glued to 1/2" OSB. The front looks good, but I'm concerned with gluing solid wood onto something that doesn't move. Also how would you cover the edges?
Another issue is lining up the vertical fluted drawers with the tall doors above and getting the profile on the edges to be the same on both sides and flow evenly onto the drawer stack beside the tall cabinets.
I also really like how the horizontal drawer dividers don't line up.
I suggested possibly painting the doors, then I could just route the flutes on the CNC out of 7/8" or 1" MDF and that would solve most of the issues.
Any ideas on how to make fluted doors and drawers out of alder that won't crack and looks good on the sides would be great.
Sorry for the long winded post.
a couple more pictures of the quality workmanship...
