Hi,


I am starting a kitchen cabinet project soon. It's a modern style frameless style with large drawers for plates, etc. These will be my first cabinets. I have a few questions.


First off, I have been experimenting building "practice" drawers and getting pretty good results. I have been using a set of Blum Tandem undermount drawer slides. They seem pretty easy to install (despite the directions) and I've learned how to design the drawer box for them. I still need to figure out how to calculate the correct length of the drawer so it goes all the way back to the rear "hooks" on the slide.

Here are my questions....


#1) If I am correct, the front Blum Tandem clips need 1/2 inch clearance from the bottom of the drawer?


#2) I have found Prefinished Drawer Sides that are already edgebanded and routed. The problem is the routing only has a clearance of 5/8ths from the bottom which seems slightly too small for the Tandem clips.


#3) The Prefinished Drawer Sides are also only routed for a 1/4 bottom which I think would be too flimsy for large stacks of plates. Would 1/2 inch drawer bottoms be thick enough or should I go with 3/4inch? These will be fairly large drawers.


#4) I don't think it would be a big issue to do the Drawers from scratch using Prefinished Maple Ply and doing the edge banding myself. The routing would be easy enough. Thoughts on this?


I am using pocket hole joinery, so nothing too fancy.


Any advice, suggestions, etc will be appreciated! I'm a rookie at this!