I have a few questions about the faceframe for a bathroom vanity I’m building. Below is the practice version I constructed and temporarily installed; these will be shop cabinets after I install the actual vanity. The two outside compartments will have drawers, the two larger compartments will have a panel door, and I’m still wrestling with the middle compartment—I thought it would be interesting to have it be open with shelves, but I may end up just putting drawers there. There is ¼” clearance to the walls on the two sides.
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So now my faceframe questions:
1. If I do inset doors and panels, does it matter if the faceframe stiles have different widths, as shown below (I’ve left out the rails for the drawers)?
For example, if I do ¼” overlap, the stiles that cover the single panes of ply (#s 1, 2, 5, and 6) would be 1 ¼” wide, but the middle two stiles (3 & 4) will be thicker because they need to cover those back-to-back 3/4” panels. So they would end up being 1 ¾” if I don’t overlap on the inside of the middle cabinet to keep it flush for shelving. In the examples below I’ve made the jump more gradual by beefing up stiles 3 & 4 by overlapping ½” on the larger compartment side. I could also leave a little more space between the outside panels and the wall, but it would have to come at the expense of the drawers and they are already narrow (9”).
2. I thought incorporating that arched piece and those side “legs” into the faceframe would impart a more furniture-like feel, but I’m not sure how to scribe the frame to the base moulding. Below are the two options I came up with—is one preferable? Are there better ways to do it? Do the two outer stiles (1 & 6) always have to be longer than the others, as in the top version of the faceframe below, or can they all be the same length as in the lower version? In the books they always seem to have them longer.
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