Customer Reviews

Building Kitchen Cabinets

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I like this book. Lots of pictures, insider tips, and a no nonsense approach to cabinet building. The author gives it to you straight. He uses pocket hole joinery in abundance. Why? Because it takes less time, joins strong, and is reversible if you want to correct something. He doesn't go for a lot of complex joinery that is very time consuming, and not what the customer cares about.
Myself I want to also build some heirloom quality cabinets. You know dovetails in every drawer corner. Inside panel solid wood overlays. Dadoes throughout, with hand rubbed finishes. You know the works. This is not about that. If you want to get practical and build fabulous looking hand made cabinets for a living, or for yourself, and not spend a month or a year doing it, this is the book for you. Instead of using plastic laminated interior panels, with fake wood, like the home centers sell you, you can use cabinet grade veneer plywood instead. This book will show you how.
Robert Yoder gives you the insider tips, on what it takes to make professional cabinets, and not waste time on non-essentials. For example, one of many that are in the book, he says that you have the option, of once gluing up your raised face panel, you can insert two finish nails in the back of the panel, at the joint of the rails and stiles, and free your clamps up for another panel. No having to have a wall full of clamps that way. See what I mean about practical. He also uses the pocket hole joinery to join his face frame panels, with the pocket holes in the back of the panel. Way quicker than mortise and tenon joinery, and actually less difficult to get a perfect fit.
I think every cabinetmaker has to have at his disposal, procedures that will enable him to make a fine set of cabinets that fit into any practical budget. This book will show you how. This is a far cry from standardized home center cabinetry. Custom-built cabinets, take into consideration that over the oven microwave cabinet, that fits it perfectly. Unlike the standardized cabinets that are pre-built, then modified on site to accommodate the custom fit. It shows.
I like everything about this book. His honesty, practical approach, insider tips, knowing what can go wrong, and ways to prevent it. Nothing talks better than experience. This guy shoots from the hip, and knows what it is like to be out in the field.
I think every level of cabinetry should be in your arsenal, and at your fingertips. This one is the one you will most frequently use. An easy read, with lots of illustrative photographs in color. It makes a great addition to your library. Highly recommended.

This is a good book for someone with good basic woodworking skills who wants to do a kitchen cabinet addition or modification but needs some help with design concepts unique to kitchen cabinetry. Unfortunately, you cannot rely upon all the formulas given in the book. Here are some examples:
On pages 60 & 61 the formulas to determine rail length and panel height for raised panel doors are both incorrect due to a simple error showing a subtraction operation instead of an addition.

Now that I've discovered these errors I've got a much lower level of confidence in other formulas used to determine part sizes--especially for those parts that I'd rather not cut too short!

The publisher's website doesn't have a forum for discussion or posting of comments/errors. I could not locate the author's Email address or website.

All-in-all this is a good book for illustrating concepts and describing shortcuts. The user needs to do their own thinking about the accuracy of any forumulas given in the book before making those final cuts.

I did a lot of research prior to building my own kitchen cabinets earlier this year and this book was what inspired me the most as Udo's Schmidt's cabinets are simply BEAUTIFUL encompassing many custom details like: mitered corner returns, beaded inset face frames, raised panel doors/drawer fronts, dovetailed drawers and arched mullion glass upper cabinet doors.

He basically sold me on the KREG pocket hole jig as he explains quite thoroughly the ease by which you can use it to not only screw together the face frames, but also to screw the face frame on to the cabinet carcase and also to screw together drawer boxes. Schmidt also covers how to use biscuit joinery to help with aligning the bottom edge of your face frame to the bottom of the cabinet so that you don't have an annoying ledge scraping your arm when cleaning or getting objects out of the cabinet. His coverage of making the mullions for arched upper cabinet doors is worth the price of the book alone! I would caution against using the same router bit that you used for the stiles as the diameter is a little too wide except for an absurdly wide mullion - use a standard cove bit instead. He also covers how to build dovetail drawers (come on, you know you want them...) with the katie jig although you can do the same with the STOTS dovetail template master for much less money.

This book will NOT give you exact dimensions on all of the cabinets that you will have to build for your kitchen. Very few cabinetry books do this with the exception of Danny Proulx's excellent book. The formula for calculating the raised panel door rail is incorrect but very EASILY recognizable by anyone with any basic algebra skills (rail width=total door width-(2 x stile width)+(2 x rail tongue - usually 3/8 so a total of 3/4)). If you want custom dimensions quickly, I would highly recommend getting a copy of ecabinets and learning how to use it. Cutlist plus (at LEAST silver edition) is also very helpful so that you don't waste too much stock.

Finally, if you are seriously considering building your own kitchen cabinets, be prepared to invest in some decent tools: contractor table saw with sliding table attachment or a eurekazone cutting guide or festool rail guide, biscuit jointer, power drill, kreg pocket hole jig, two routers (at least one that's 3hp for raised panels), a random orbital sander for face frames and raised panels, an HVLP gun for clear finishes or an airless if you're going to be doing painted doors, a circular saw for cutting pieces down to more manageable pieces, an impact driver for installation, a jig saw if you're going to be doing arched raised panels and a jointer and a planer to prepare rough stock (this is a major time eater along with finishing!!!) and a dust collector and respirator mask. STRONGLY consider prefinished plywood or melamine to save some time in finishing.

I just recently completed making our kitchen cabinets by using this book as my guide throughout the entire process. This was the largest woodworking project by far that I have attempted and it turned out very well. Mr. Schmidt's construction techniques, particularly on the base cabinets, are simple and straight forward but result in a very strong well built cabinet. Probably the most helpful section to me was on building corner cabinets for a lazy susan. This would have been very difficult if it wasn't for the step by step directions the author provided. It turned what would have been nearly impossible into mildly challenging. There are the dimensional errors that other reviewers mentioned that really unnecessarily complicate the planning and building, but I found these to be more of a nuisance through the whole process than something that kept me from building quality cabinetry.

The book also has very good instruction on special cabinets (microwave, pantry, refrigerator etc..) different techniques for building drawers, building end panels, choosing and installing hardware among others. I looked at a couple other cabinet making books, purchased one other besides this one (Building Traditional Kitchen Cabinets), and after reading reading both I felt that this book really described the nuts and bolts of cabinet making better for me. I think this book along with careful planning turned a large potentially complicated project into a large manageable project.

This is the third book of its kind that I have purchased, and thankfully I now feel I have the necessary information to construct our new cabinets, thanks to this book. This is by far the best book of its type for me. It covers everything you can imagine and then some, as regards to kitchen cabinet construction. How to select materials, shop equipment, power tools, and gives you very good suggestions on how to go about the entire process, in a step by step fashion.
The only subject he suggests you get more info on is finishing, suggesting entire books are written about this subject, but he does go on and give you his brief advice for finishing your cabinets.
The photos in the book are excellent, and once again, the how to and tips on what to avoid and where to look for problems is spot on and very well done. I highly recommend this book to any and all amateur cabinet makers.
I cannot say enough good about it, this book is exactly what was seeking all along.

hope this helps;
Jeff

I'm an intermediate woodworker at best. I purchased four books from Amazon on building cabinets before I started. This is the only book that is actually still in my workshop (covered in sawdust) being used as a reference.

I set out to build top quality cabinets. I find this book teaches the quality of cabinets that I want to build and gives flexible formulas to get the right dimensions. Lots of diagrams and pictures that are useful when trying to figure out answers to little problems, like how to divide up raised panels on pantry doors. It also found that it has the most useful chapter on finishing. I find in general that Taunton books are the best, and this book is no exception.

I built 17 cabinets, including 2 pantries with pullout drawers and a peninsula with raised panels all around using the methods described in this book and it took me about a year of Saturdays. About 80% of my time was spent dimensioning rough cut lumber and finishing the completed cabinets. If you want to build less expensive cabinets quickly, such as for a rental property, or a property you are going to sell soon, I recommend the Danny Proulx book. Using Proulx's techniques, the same cabinets could probably be built in a week and the results are as good as stock cabinets you would by at a homecenter.

I bought this book and Danny Proulx's Build Your Own Kitchen Cabinets (Popular Woodworking). Proulx's book focused on particleboard construction and mostly 32mm cabinets. I was very dissapointed as I was anxious to start building cabinets and particleboard is not what I was looking for. This book however, was just what the Dr. ordered. I'm very comfortable with my tools and have been woodworking for years now, but I still found some usefull tips in the book. I skimmed the book without reading all of it and immediately bought the lumber I needed and began construction. I had a completed bathroom vanity cabinet in 1 afternoon (not including stain and finish). As others have mentioned, his dimensions are not perfect, but since my house doesn't perfectly match the book, I used my own tape measure.

Even with the dimension issues here and there, I highly recommend this book for anyone who actually wants to make cabinets. I have a few other books that discuss the "idea" of making cabinets. This one tells you the tools you need and how to do it. It focuses on pocket-hole joinery but it also shows how you can use other joinery techniques as well. I can't stress this point enough... if you are planning on building cabinets, you will love this book. If you just want to read about building cabinets, this book isn't what you want.

I'm off to buy more lumber for more cabinets!!!!

This book has good overall information, but many of the illustrations are incomplete and dimensions are incorrect. This caused me anxiety while I was trying to plan my own cabinets. I will now buy another book that will assist me better with the planning process of my cabinets.

Aside from a few errors in formulas and missing details in illustrations this one is a gem. The auther assumes that you have a good working knowledge of wood working tools and terms. If you don't, this may not be the book for you. You should be at ease with your own design abilities also. I was thrilled to find a qualified woodworking author that uses production techniques such as pocket hole joints and brads as apposed to dovetails and mortise and tenon for the bulk of the joinery. Schmidt's workmanship speaks for itself. I wanted to build beautiful and durable kitchen cabinets not museum pieces. With this book I can build either.
The book should be read from front to back as it follows the production process from start to finish. If you are good with your tools and would like one book for building kitchen cabinets... this is the one. I hope this helps.

I puchased this with Building Traditional Kitchen Cabinets by Tolpin. Between the two books, this one was able to fill in the gaps left by Tolpin, but I would not use it as my sole source. It provided more detail than Tolpin in some areas, but Tolpin's text is still the more comprehensive. This one helped me on face frames with biscuits the most. Tolpin's was more oriented to screwing the face frames together which would have made me get the tools to use that method.