advice on building a 'built in' cabinet

[Bob Cooper]

I've built my first set of kitchen cabinets for a new house but now i've got to build a "built in serving area" and i'm seeking advice how to handle something. See the attached picture.

My question deals with how to handle the bottom where the 1x6 baseboard along the wall intersects with the cabinet. The built-in sits back a good 8 inches from the front edge.

The built in cabinet will not have a toe kick (unlike the picture) but will be more like a standard piece of furnature. I suppose this also means that the bottom part of the cabinet (where the toe kick normally is) will sit out 3/4" beyond the face frame and have some kind of molding above it.
How do you handle the intersection of the baseboard (stained cypress) with the bottom of this cabinet (tigerwood)?


Seems like it will look kind of odd to build the cabinet snug against the side walls and then have this 1x6 baseboard just butt into it.

Thanks Bob C

[Jamie Buxton]

Plan A. Butt the tall cypress baseboard into the cabinet. This means that the drawers in the cabinet can't go all the way to the side walls, because the bottom drawer would be running into the cypress. But it would work.

Plan B. Cut the cypress baseboard back to some convenient break, for instance that corner 8" in front of the cabinet. Use a shorter baseboard in the cabinet area, and perhaps one which matches the cabinet materials. Or a variant of this plan is to use the shorter baseboard for 8", and then have it turn the corner, and go someplace further down the wall where it would transition to the 6" cypress. I like this plan better.

[Joe Unni]

I'd just terminate the baseboard at the corner that Jamie suggests by just using a mitered return and NO baseboard in the cabinet area.

My 2 cents.

Good luck,
-joe

[Larry Rasmussen]

I'm kind of thinking like Joe, the no baseboard in recess area although I was thinking ending the trim along the wall with a round over. Anything but square so it won't just look interupted. Larry R.

[Jim Becker]

For built-in cabinets, I prefer to stop the baseboard molding at the cabinet. If you need that profile to wrap around, you can still do that using the material you remove from the wall if it's existing or with new stock as necessary.

[Bob Cooper]

The wall is your typical drywall -- it's a new house. What i think i'm going to do is to terminate the 1x6 baseboard into the toe-kick/skirt of the built-in. One thing i'm not sure about is whether to make them the same height or vary the height a little -- say 1/2" as shown in this sketchup. BTW the scale of this sketch is **way** off so don't examine it too closely.

[Jim Becker]

The "toe" area of the cabinet likely needs to be proportional to the cabinet or the same as other cabinets in the area. My baseboards are higher than the toe area of my kitchen cabinets, for example. The baseboard is cut to flow under that area so that it terminates naturally at the cabinet.