Steps for Manufacturing (or, “building”) Kitchen Cabinets

There is a correct order in which all cabinet jobs should be completed, from start to finish. Building your own kitchen masterpiece starts with understanding the proper procedure for manufacturing your cabinets.


Steps for Building Your Own Kitchen Cabinets

1) Measure the area where the cabinetry will go in your home. Obviously, if your are remodeling an existing kitchen you will have to calculate exact dimensions after you tear out or build new walls, soffits or ceilings.

2) Draw a workable plan. For many years we used graph paper to draw our entire kitchen and bathroom cabinetry plans on. Each square on the graph paper can either be equal to three inches or six inches. The ratio you use will be determined by the size of your walls where the cupboards will be installed.

3) Calculate and order all of the materials that will be needed. We always add up all of the linier inches that the upper cabinets have and divide the number by ninety six inches. This determines how many rips we will need of the eight foot long melamine board or ply-wood that we are building our kitchen or bathroom cabinets out of.

4) Make cutting lists for all of the drawers, toe bases, doors and any specialty items. Special things would include fabricating things like dishwasher end panels, refrigerator panels, tall oven cabinets or specially designed pantry cabinetry.

5) Next cut all of the parts for the job if you have the room to place them on carts or to pile them up in a convenient location that will not interfere with building the cabinets.

6) Assemble the cabinet boxes, drawers, toe bases and countertops.

7) Laminate, veneer and finish all areas that will be exposed that do not get covered by doors.

8) Clean all parts thoroughly.

9) Insert drawers and attach all of the doors and drawer faces.

10) Install all specialty items, such as trash can pull-outs, cutlery drawer inserts and pop-up or out gadgets.

11) Install the cabinets


When you decide to build your own kitchen, it’s important to work from a plan. Never just try to wing it. The drawings that you make should be triple checked. Every kitchen cabinet that you are building should have all of the parts double checked prior to assembling the cupboards. Quality control efforts will save you a lot of headaches. Manufacturing your own cabinets can be very rewarding. Never be in a great hurry and always enjoy the work at hand, no matter how challenging it may be.