Building kitchen cabinets

In todays economy many people can’t afford new kitchen cabinets and the prices of quality kitchen cabinets are extremely expensive, even for a well situated household. The other bad thing about kitchen cabinets at your local store is that there are no more cabinets from good quality wood like oak, walnut, cherry or marple.

Todays cabinets are all mainly made of plywood and even the quality of the plywood is questionable. Also joints are forgotten in the modern furniture industry and they all rely on lot of wood glue and low quality screws and nails. If you want your cabinets custom made by a quality cabinet maker from high quality wood, your head will spin when you hear the price. The only solution to this problem is in making your own kitchen cabinets. Building kitchen cabinets by Udo Schmidt is the book from which you will learn how to easily make your own high quality kitchen cabinets and you don’t have to be skilled woodworker to make your own kitchen cabinets.

The author of the book, Udo Schmidt, apprenticed with a master cabinet maker in Germany before moving to the United States over 20 years ago. Today he combines Old World craftsmanship with time-saving tools and techniques. He lives and works in North Carolina.

When you decided to build your own cabinets you are not just decided to save money. You can also improve upon the materials and construction used in factory-made cabinets, and get exactly the sizes you want. With the techniques that Udo Schimdt demonstrates and explains, you can incorporate custom details in your cabinets to make them even more distinctive. Arched doors, custom cornice treatments, oversized pantry cabinets and solid wood end panels are just a few of the options to consider. If you are comfortable using a few simple tools like router, table saw and drill, this book will show you how to build beautiful cabinets in your own workshop. Building kitchen cabinets incorporates designing custom cabinetry to suit your space and budget, building drawers and doors in a variety of different styles, installing Euro-style concealed hinges and drawer slides, improving storage and convenience with special hardware and accessories, selecting and installing a wide range of countertops and much more.

Book incorporates lots of pictures, insider tips and no nonsense approach to cabinet building. The author gives it to you straight. He uses pocket hole joinery in abundance because it takes less time, joints are strong and they are reversible if you want to correct something. Author doesn’t go for a lot of complex joinery because that is very time consuming, and not what the reader cares about. 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.

The coauthor of the book, Robert Yoder, gives you the insider tips on what it takes to make professional cabinets and not waste time on non-essentials. 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.
We think every cabinetmaker has to have this book 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.
We 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.
We 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 and we highly recommend it.