Cutting Down Cabinet Doors To Fit: a house log

We knew from the moment that we chose to add new (secondhand) cabinets to our kitchen that the doors could be a challenge. Even though we only ended up with 5 missing doors, it was essential that we get those to match with the rest of the kitchen for a seamless look (aka: so no one would look around and guess we had some mismatched thrift store cabinets among us). Here are the five doorless cabinets that we had to address:

We knew we had a few options to result in a kitchen full of matching doors, so one of them was bound to work. Here they are (in order of expense from most to least):

1. Getting all new doors and drawer faces for the whole kitchen
2. Ordering custom-made matching doors for simply the few cabinets missing them
3. Try to cut-down/repurpose leftover doors from the old cabinets that we are no longer using (remember we took a bunch down here)

We in fact investigated Option #1 first, because we do enjoy a shaker style door (like the ones we chose for our last kitchen below):

But as we began adding up the cost (best on a few distinct sources, from Home Depot to online door-making warehouses) and it began to look like it’d be upward of $2,000-3,000. So yeah…. next option?

Happily, option #2 was substantially less pricey. Our challenge here is that we have a quite specific cabinet style. They are extremely solid well-built custom oak cabinets and doors (which is pleasant – and we are glad to have them)… but being custom means they are a bit unusual (aka: haaard to find). They are in fact framed cabinets (i.e. there is a small lip on the front of the cabinet box) and are partial inset doors (meaning part of them sit within the frame, part sit on top of the frame). This makes for an excellent seal that fits together amazingly (like one big puzzle) but it also makes hoping to somehow “find” matching doors in our custom style/size/depth virtually impossible.

As for buying new ones “to order” in specific sizes that we request, no one that we dropped in on sold partial inset doors with the same detailing on the front (and we could not use non-partial-inset doors because those would stick out about a half-inch more from the cabinet when closed, so they’d be truly obvious and weird looking among the rest).

So next we called up the original manufacturer of the cabinets (a private company out of Pennsylvania called “Quaker Made” who specializes in custom cabinetry). They patched me through to an independent repair guy who makes new doors, so I gave him rough measurements and he quoted me about $800 to make new doors. Not bad, but a bit more than we were hoping to spend… especially when we had so many extra doors laying around. Including these five that were ideal candidates for being re-fitted.

It kinda seemed stupid of us not to at least try to make these work first. If our attempt failed, we could consistently go to Option #2 as a back-up. And you know we like to work with what we have. So yeah, cue the power tools.

All of the doors were too big for their new cabinet-y homes, so we knew we had to cut them down. Cutting them down was not going to be as straightforward as simply slicing off the extra inches since I needed to maintain the raised border and the raised inner panel on each door (along with the inset edge around the perimeter). That meant I need to shave off the extra inches from the middle of the doors. Yikes.

To get especially straight cuts, I used my table saw. For anyone wondering, our table saw of choice is this Skil one for $150, which we truly like… perhaps a little too much).

Two cuts later, I had took out a section from the middle and was left with two halves that would create the ideal door length.

To secure the halves together, I made some pocket holes with one of my other BFF tools (my Kreg jig)…

…then I carefully clamped them together before screwing everything tightly to secure them. I also use wood glue for the strongest possible hold, but I wipe the excess right away with a rag to keep things looking neat, which is why you do not see it gushing out from the seam in this pic:

Now, for the doors above the fridge I had to repeat this cut-jig-screw step the other direction too, since the spare door was both too tall and too wide. Yup, I totally Frankensteined those babies.

But once it was all screwed together again (and the hinges were reattached), things were in fact fitting together much better than I expected (full disclosure: I fully thought this method would flop, but it was still worth a try simply in case it ended up saving us $800).

Now I know what some of you are thinking – because I was thinking the same thing: this is not looking so hot. But I reminded myself that once we add in some wood putty and sand those babies ’til they are seamless we should be in ok shape. And once we use pleasant thick self leveling primer and paint, even things like the wood grain – and hopefully those hairline cracks should be undetectable (we used self leveling paint on the oak office cabinets that we painted and the wood grain does not show through at all). Oh yeah, and we are certainly moving the knob to a less awkward place (replacing it with new hardware in fact)….

…and we will use wood putty to fill the screw holes in the back (it is looking fairly treacherous back there).

I likely made this process seem faster and easier than it truly was. It took me all morning to do these two doors (and a third test door that I messed around with first to see what worked and what did not before moving on to a door that matters). And there were not simply two cuts per door – there were certainly a few trims and recuts along the way to make sure things fit snugly, but not too snugly thanks to that inset-back edge.

The microwave cabinet door was easier, since I was reusing the door that originally went on that once-taller cabinet. So it simply took cutting a few inches out of the middle to make this door work.

This one only took me an hour-ish to do. Progress! The reason even one cut takes so long is that I measure and remeasure and quite nervously make my cuts on the conservative side (since you can consistently shave more off but it is a lot harder to add stuff back in).

That progress got derailed a bit when I faced the corner cabinet. This secondhand cabinet came with bi-fold doors, but those hidden hinges would not work for our partial inset doors (which meant if we tried to use them those doors would stick out at least a half-inch more from the frame than the rest of the doors in our kitchen – which would look terrible). So we debated installing a pie-cut lazy susan and simply affixing the doors directly to that (kinda like the one in our other corner cabinet across the way), but nixed that idea because after a bit of thought we chose one base cabinet with a lazy susan was sufficient for us – and we were in fact enjoying all of the wide open space for bigger items (which would be lost if we sliced things up by adding a lazy susan).

But before I could even start dealing with the doors, I had to fix these notches that were cut out of the frame to accommodate the old hinges.

After a few tries, I at last was able to jigsaw a couple of pieces that fit into the notches (not perfectly, but wood putty thankfully covers a multitude of sins when you are painting your cabinets). I simply screwed them into place and was glad to at last have a place to attach my hinges (which will all be took out again for our wood-puttying and sanding step down the road – and most likely sprayed a new color to match our new hardware).

What we ended up doing with the door was the simplest solution that we could come up with using what we had: two separate doors, hinged on opposite sides.

It took me the rest of the afternoon (plus part of the next morning) to get these to at last fit right, but you can see how they open below. The left door has a knob (that is quite awkwardly placed – which we will move) to open that side first. And once that door is open we can easily pull the other one open afterwards. We enjoy that they still give us complete access to the wide shelves inside. Makes us quite glad we did not go the lazy susan route since we already have one of those in another corner.

In the end, it certainly took longer than I hoped it would (mostly because of plenty of noodling and trimming) but I think it came out fairly good. Everything fits. Everything closes nicely. And, once it is all wood puttied / sanded / primed / painted, everything should look fairly much as good as new.

And, of course, if we do not like how they look once they are painted we can consistently call up the guy who’ll make us new doors for 800 beans if we have to (it is not worth having a semi-ugly door situation to feast our eyes on every day in our new kitchen to save $800, so if it comes to that we will get ‘er done).

As for durability, joining solid oak doors with nails or glue alone would be a recipe for disaster – but making pocket holes and using heavy duty metal screws meant for the job along with wood glue is the permanent, strong, professional way to go (I like to do my research so things do not fall apart later, which only adds up to more work for us). So there is zero flex in the newly joined doors – they do not close oddly or feel wiggly. They are solid – and should function exactly the same way that our other solid oak doors do for the long haul.

As you can imagine, now we are even more excited to get these suckers painted. Especially now that I have got all these ugly cuts that I want to hide going on. If only I did not have to do stuff like add toe-kick molding and other miscellaneous trim first. Although I did already add a new window sill and window trim (more on that later).

If we are being realistic, it is unlikely that we will get a painted cabinet update to you before Christmas in ten days (puttying and sanding and drying times for primer/paint would make that kinda impossible). But perhaps we will recruit Santa to assist us sand and prime when he drops down that chimney in 10 days. Sigh. If only these things could happen while we slept. Can you imagine how sweet that would be?