Basics on builtin

[Alex Horvath]

Hi all,

Builder originally intended this space for a TV but I'd like to make a builtin for it. The space is 54" tall by 44" wide.
It's very deep at 27" but that's OK.
The actual usage is not that important, I'll probably make a few adjustable shelves for books or spirits.
I'd like to make it with a face frame and 2 inset doors with divided lites.

I have made small overlay or frameless cabinets before but nothing this large so I have few design questions -

1. Assuming a toe kick and subtracting the frame rail width the doors will still be about 40" tall. I assume standard divided lite (no mid rail) cabinet door frame design methods are OK at this dimension (I can add mortise and tenon to the cope and stick).
2. Is it advisable to have a face frame center stile or is this mostly an aesthetic issue?
3. I suppose I'll have to move that outlet to the inside of the builtin to keep it legal.

As far as fitting it to that space, my inclination would be to build the cabinet (with base) as large as possible while still fitting into the opening and then make the face frame oversize, trimming to fit.
I would still need a small quarter round between the face frame and pilasters/mantle.

Other than that I think it's a standard cabinet design and I have plenty of resources on the construction details.

Thanks for any tips.

[Jeff Bartley]

Alex--sounds like you have a good plan, if you didn't want to use quarter-round to hide a gap you can also scribe the sides into the existing space. It would be important to center the cabinet so your scribes were even. I remember reading an article where the author (I think it was Tony O'Mally) used 1/4" splines to line up the face frame with the cabinet sides. In the face frames he ran two dados: one was for the correct alignment with the cabinet sides and the other was offset. During installation he used a spacer equal in width to the offset between the dados to scribe the face frame into the wall. Simple! Hope this helps!

[Kenneth Speed]

I'd make the cabinet box small enough so that it fit in the opening easily and I'd probably make the face frame about 1/4 inch narrower than the opening on each side and recess a separate scribe behind the face frame so that it is partially hidden by a shadow line when the cabinet is installed. Your installation will look very nice this way and be much easier.


Your doors are going to be 1'2" shorter than the height of your cabinet? Why? Something doesn't sound right there unless your face frame members and kick are really huge.

The cabinet doesn't need a center mullion but the shelves are going to need some kind of treatment to bridge that span, you can either build a lip on the shelf or you could put a center mullion in the faceframe to support the center front of the shelves.

You want two tall doors divided vertically into two glass panels with no horizontal rail? You can do it but I'd draw it out full size before I did if I were you. I think I'd want a horizontal going across that opening about a third of the way down from the top of the door is it were me.


Keep us posted,


Ken