Conestoga is a large door company. That is who my cabinetmaker used. Mine cabinets are beaded inset.

They do some nice work. Talk about custom, though. They are pricy!

I have picked up a few pieces from that line. Good, solid construction. One of them is actually my inspiration piece. I'm trying to find where I can buy the 1/4" beaded inset right this moment. I am not confident with the router yet.

Thanks!:)

Might not work for you, but I got my doors for our inset bathroom cabs from Habitat for Humanity's restore. My cabinet maker had never done inset before (and I've never seen them here except where it's original in period homes), but he used the doors and drawer I found and built the cabs around them. My best advice to you, would be to research how much space to leave around doors and drawers - esp. if you're going to paint. My guy didn't leave quite enough room and had to take a bit out later when they started to stick in the humidity.

I just got back from Community Forklift.
I bought a bunch of slab doors and some shaker for another room.

You take the opening, right down to the 32nd of an inch.
Most hinges are 1/16" so take that into consideration.
Then your door needs to be 1/16" of an inch smaller than the opening all the way around.

The tough part is measuring the hinge (sometime it comes on the package), and making sure your saw is accurate.

It helps if you're one anal snot-nose like I am.

I'll have to ck what kind of doors I just picked up and if they're wood or mdf. I am painting, so I don't care.

Thanks for the thoughts! :)

C.

"Most hinges are 1/16" so take that into consideration. "

Or zero if you let them into the doors and cabinet sides.

For what it is worth, I built all of my cabinets, and ordered the doors, drawer fronts, and drawer boxes from Walzcraft. 59 separate pieces for $2500. The doors and drawer fronts were less than half of that...I have 19 drawers and the drawer boxes take up a ton of wood. Every piece I got from them is beautiful, and WAY nicer than anything I could have built. I have no idea what your budget it, but if you can swing it, Id just buy the doors and drawer fronts.

I also ordered some doors and drawer fronts for a vanity I built. www.barkerdoor.com Also a good price and great quality. They dont have as large of a variety as Walzcraft does, and I wanted something special for my kitchen cabinets.

I appreciate the referral, theballs! Very cool..

Yes, I could mortise the hinges, but then I must make certain to figure out the measurements again. :)

So what's a little more thought since I dream of all this every time I sleep!?

C.

I have beautiful, perfect, custom, slab, modern, inset cabinets from Ayr Custom Cabinetry in Nappanee, Indiana. I haven't posted yet. Still cannot decide on a countertop! Good luck.

Good luck with the project. DH and I are down to the wire with our home built shaker inset cabinets. Got door panels drying in the basement as I type.

Our house is 135 years old, and we wanted to stay with more of an "old farmhouse" feel, so the minor imperfections we got from not being very experiences at this actually look right at home. I'm not talking about glaring mistakes, but things like the gap between the drawers and frame isn't exatly the same all around, or on all of the drawers all around the kitchen (it varies about 1/16th of a inch, and not that noticable to the eye).

Making the doors is a ton of work - but half of that is in the painting so if you are going to paint them anyway . . .

My main reason for not buying doors made is I hate (with a passion) ending up with small hairline unpainted edges when the wood expands and contracts over the seasons (and we have wild seasonal changes here in SD) and the only way to avoid that is to paint the panels before they are put into the frames.

Precisions router bits help too - we started with a cheaper set and finally moved up to Eagle ($140 for the pair) and that made a big difference in how the parts fit together.

While I'm not "anal-snot" my DH is - and he does the cutting. He does reloading where micro precision is needed, so he's not happy if he's got a 1/32" slop in cutting wood. And he's constantly checking to make sure everything stays square (blades and such) during the project. Drives me nuts - but I've learned to shut up and walk away and let him "fiddle" until he's happy with the results.

Conestoga doors are very reasonable for the quality you are getting. IMO.
Casey

For the folks who mentioned Conestoga, where did you purchase the cabinets? I have read that they can be purchased thru 3 different places online eg: thecabinetjoint.com , being one. This whole GW site has been an eye openng experience. I look fwd to your responses.