Worst Doors Ever!

Ugh! What a nightmare. I’m not sure where I went wrong, but these cabinet doors are not working. Unfortunately, I have so much invested in them (More time than money) that I must make them work. First they were too narrow, and, if the truth be told, and bit crooked. Fixing these issues took a lot of time.

I knew they were too narrow because I cut the rails a little short. Even before I glued them up I fit them in place and saw the problem. What surprised me was that they were a little crooked. The trick to making sure they are square is to measure the two opposing diagonals. I did that and they all came out at 42-inches. I think maybe as I tightened the clamps at the end something slipped. I’m not sure, but they needed to be fixed.

I trimmed the two ends to square them up. Its not so much that it will be noticeable, but it was time consuming. My table saw is not big enough so I had to do this with a straight edge and template bit on the router. It is a lot of clamp-trim-fit-clamp-trim-fit-clamp-trim-fit. Before you know it, half of your life has gone by.

I decided to put a 1/8-inch bead around the edges to make up for them being too narrow. Its called an 1/8th-inch bead but its actually a ¼-inch wide. I think the 1/8th-inch is the radius or something. Anyway, what I ended up with was more like 5/16th-inch wide trim around the edges. This ends up adding 5/8th-inch to the total width and height. This means I need to trim even more. Very, very time consuming.

To make matters worse, I installed the panels before doing all of this. With the panels in, these doors are kind of heavy and the back of the door where the panel is kept getting hung up on the edge of the router table. It just did not go smoothly at all.

Noooooooow I have them straight and with the bead on and they are a little too big. I’m talking very little here. One fits in the opening and will stay there with not visible means of support. It’s a little too snug. The other is equally as snug in width but won’t even go in the opening for height. Like I said, it’s a disaster.



So tomorrow I’m going to plane down the hinge side and bit and install the hinges and then I will plane down the other three sides until I get a nice fit. I’ll just keep 40 watt bulbs in the ceiling fixture and maybe know one will notice.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll tell you about the spinning blade of death {No, its not a Buffy thing}