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aimless07

I hate my cabinet doors

10 years ago

Today they started to put the doors on and I am not a happy camper.

This is the picture I submitted to my builder for the type of cabinets I wanted.

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Traditional Kitchen by Minneapolis Architects & Building Designers Charlie & Co. Design, Ltd

This is what I got. Plain front drawers and uppers with this weird piece of wood in the middle. The smaller cabinets don't have the weird piece of wood. I don't know if this middle piece of wood is decorative or necessary, or what. But I hate it. The plain front drawers, I can live with. I have seen shaker style kitchens with plain front drawers. It looks okay, but it was not what was in the picture.

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To me, the piece of wood in the middle makes the cabinets look like shutters. In fact, the shutters that we are going to have in the front of the house look very similar to this.

Do you even think the middle piece of wood can be removed easily??

Comments (11)

  • 10 years ago

    Ummmm, I would have the builder redo these. Did the builder agree to do the doors/drawers as in the photos? This clean style is really not difficult to do.

    If the builder had agreed to do the doors per the photo you specified, and he did not, then a redo is in order

  • 10 years ago

    Agree with Carson, that is not what you requested. Have them change them to your satisfaction.

  • 10 years ago

    I believe it's because those doors are so tall. They will build them without that rail, but not cover against them warping during the warranty period. It's the physical limitation of the material.
    Another way around it is to have those doors made from full 1" thick stock instead of the nominal 3/4" stock.
    Casey

  • 10 years ago

    Casey,

    If that is true, I wish someone would have told me. I don't know these things and it should have been communicated with me first.

  • 10 years ago

    Hmmm. I've never seen cabinets done like that. Ask for them to be fixed, it can't be that big of a deal. I have Shaker cabs with a middle rail, but it's vertical down the center, not horizontal.

  • 10 years ago

    Poor quality wood. Mix of partial overlay and full overlay and in between shows poor craftsmanship. Site finishing ensures a poor finish. The whole shebang is a steaming turd. Have it removed and buy something of decent quality.

  • 10 years ago

    Those tall doors absolutely must have those center rails. It's a structural thing to help keep the doors from warping.

    And the small top drawer fronts are typically slabs and not five piece. Otherwise. the drawer would be almost all rail and stile and very little panel. Which looks weird and complicates mounting the hardware. Slab fronts are also easier to clean and keep clean.

  • 10 years ago

    cilantro,

    Does it matter that there was center rails on the inside of the door?

  • 10 years ago

    If each inside panel is individually mounted, it needs the rails on the inside and outside to hold it, doesn't it?

    It does seem to be present in your inspiration photo too--look at the tall skinny cab on the far left. The style is really fine.

    I don't know about the workmanship.

    The overlay seems consistent to me, but it's a bit hard to be sure from here. The ones in the inspiration photo are inset so there will be some differences there. Notice the top drawers in the Houzz photo are slabs too.

  • 10 years ago

    I'm confused. I think your inspiration photo shows inset cabinets. but your cabinets are partial mixed with full overlay. Did you request inset or overlay?

    Having the top drawers slab is not that unusual. We had to do the same thing because of the height. Same with the rail for big doors. That's not what's making it look odd. It's the spacing of the drawers and doors. I would have them redone as full overlay.

    Here you can see the large doors have rails:

    Here you can see the top drawer is a slab. These are inset.

  • 10 years ago

    The tall pantry doors need the rail because of their height. The door to the left of it does not.

    The drawers also don't need to be slab. It's about a 5% upcharge to get 5 piece drawer fronts on my kitchen cabinets. And I have them now. It's fine. The photos here are slab because they are inset drawers. With inset, the drawer front is smaller, so the rails almost meet. But since these drawers should be full overlay, they'll be bigger and don't need to be slab. In fact, if you do slab drawers, full overlay, then you need the rails to help it look more like the inspiration.

    And the reason they need to be full overlay is that the doors meet in the middle, and the drawers don't. It looks like someone wasn't paying attention. If you spaced the doors to match the drawer spacing (partial overlay), then you'd have a gap where you'd see into the cabinet. To avoid that, you need a post to fill the gap between the doors.

    But then a) you'd have a post making that cabinet less functional; and b) it wouldn't look anything like the inspiration.

    So, yeah, those doors and drawers need to go.