Cabinetmaking

Cabinetmaking is the discipline that joins together carcase construction, face frames, doors, drawers, and the hardware that lets all of it move and stay aligned. It's where workshop skills compound — a kitchen of cabinets is twenty drawers, ten doors, twelve carcases, and forty-eight hinges, all of which have to play together for years. Build one well and you've built dozens of skills at once.

The decision tree is short. Frameless or face-frame? Frameless reads modern and uses less wood; face-frame reads traditional and forgives small errors. Inset, partial-overlay, or full-overlay doors? Each has a hinge family and a reveal pattern. Plywood or solid for the carcase? Plywood for stability and speed in a kitchen, solid for heirloom pieces. Once those are set, the rest of cabinetmaking is execution: square the carcase, flat the face frame, fit the doors and drawers to the same reveal everywhere, and pre-finish before assembly so the final piece doesn't need to be moved into a finishing room.

The guides below cover carcase joinery, face-frame construction, door styles and the hinges that hold them, drawer joinery and slide selection, and the assembly sequence that makes a cabinet line up the first time.