Cabinets & Casework

As the house continues to advance, we have come to a point where we need to buckle down and make some pretty important decisions about the interior construction and aesthetic. One major component is the built-in kitchen casework. We know that we are trying to achieve a clean, simple, and elegant look, but we are unsure as to how to advance with the construction. One method would be to order premanufactured cabinet boxes in standard sizes and then complete them by producing our own cabinet doors and custom components. While this limits us to standard cabinet sizes, it gives us the advantage of saving some time - keeping us from fabricating all of the components ourselves.

But in the interest of saving some cold, hard cash, we are pursuing the option of fabricating all of the casework ourselves. More than just saving money, this will allow us to produce more custom cabinetry to suite the needs of the house and it will prove to be an invaluable educational tool for all the students involved in the design and construction of the cabinets. In addition to the traditional woodworking tools found in the woodshop, we also have a CNC router available to aid in our attempt to create beautiful casework. Using CNC (computer numerical control) router, we can build a 3-dimensional model of the cabinets in the computer and have each piece precisely cut out on the router. This ensures precision and helps save material as it fits the most amount of pieces possible on each sheet of plywood. After the pieces are cut out, we just need to assemble them with a minimal amount of finishing of the materials.

We plan to use this week to ensure that we are competent to complete the casework in a timely fashion. By the end of the week, we will finish designing the cabinets and hopefully build one cabinet box using the CNC router, recognizing any weaknesses we have in our process.