I recently built cabinets out of maple and have been scratching my head about the pantry doors. I would like the doors to “match” the cabinets and panels in the kitchen but am worried about weight and warping. With the lack of space I decided, for better or worse, t0 have the doors at a 90 degree angle and open inwards. The pic should explain. The height of the doors is around 6 1/2′ and the widths are 2′ and 1 1/2′. I worry about using the same stile and rail method as my upper cabinet doors due to the difficulty of getting such a long run to not twist/warp over time. I have been looking into light weight torsion box with 1/4 maple ply on the outside, or even 1/4 maple ply sandwiching rigid foam. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
Daniel
Replies
If it were me, I would put a divider in somewhere around the middle, and make 4 doors instead of 2 really tall ones. Doors over 6 feet tall are really prone to warping.
You really bit off a lot with that Pantry design. No commercial cabinet marker will warranty such a door if they are even willing to make it. It's almost guaranteed to warp. Commercial pantries have 2 compartments and split the doors into 2
I also don't grasp how you intend to have them open in, or for that matter how you intend to hold them closed and square.
As for torsion boxes I'm not sure that will help much without making them disportionately thick. You may be better off trying to incorporate an aluminum angle into a saw kerf in the back of the door rails and stiles with some epoxy and recessed screws it might be able to keep the doors square.
As an aside, take it from someone who has been involved in kitchen remodeling for 40 years. Leaving such an important detail hanging to this point in the project is really painting yourself into the proverbial corner with few good options.
One option you could try would be to put supports on the back of the panel.
Chinese woodworkers would run a sliding dovetailed support across the frame and the panel, tying them together and also preventing warping whilst also permitting wood movement.
I've never done this, but seen a video about it, I think on this site?
It will not prevent all twist, but it will make the panel much more rigid.
Give up on the open center & complete the face frames into the corner and breaking it up into 4 doors. Fridge side will have to swing away from the fridge to open, so might as well match them and put all of the hinges in the center. That back corner will be a black hole forever, but is a perfect place for a built-in on the other side of the wall.
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I will describe a good method of doing tall door stiles, but I don't think its a good idea here, mainly due to appearance and functionality
One of the issues is the shelf locations. If they are adjustable, I would move one to the level of the counter top. and one to the bottom of the upper cab.
Then build the doors to match - 2 lowers, 2 middles and 2 uppers.
You can reinforce a long stile by a technique called splining. You do this by plowing a deep groove where the panel slot is, to within 1/8" of the edge. Then glue in a spline using a stiff drying glue like plastic resin. Keep clamped to a flat surface while drying. You will produce a stile that is extremely stiff and very resistant to bending. You still want to start with rift sawn lumber!
Some people rely on multiple hinges, which is fine for the hinge side but the other side is still flapping in the wind..............
I would agree on possibly shortening the doors. The lower shelves appear to be dog stuff anyway. Form follows function and the change in simitry with adjoining cabinet is to me immaterial. As to changing the shelf dimensions, they're your shelves for your stuff and probably thought out by you to meet your personal needs. I don't think your going to have much trouble with door weight and it would be possible to make thicker stiles and rails that appear the same from the outside though that would probably mean some modification to your shelves.
I have high corner cabinets with the hinges at the corner and I have to say they suck, you have this difficult to reach dead air space and stuff tends to get lost in there. If you can work out open corners I think that's at least better to something like way cool! 6' + doors could be a problem like you know ,that's what you posted about. A 4'(+-) and a 2' (+ -) and or High quality materials will help ,Blum type hinges give you adjustment possibilities that are lacking in other types of hinges. More hinges can help but I see a possible problem. If the side rails are the same dimension as the other doors in your kitchen and you use the same type of pulls are you sure that the doors can pass by each other coming from the center? You could use a shorter to recessed pull on those doors...it no big deal to change them all ,bummer though.
I'm not going to get into your design but as for construction.
Your torsion box idea is nothing more than a home made hollow core door and should not warp if the skins are glue sufficiently to the internal frame.
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