Cabinet Doors

In our prior article we discussed the disagreement between frameless and face-framed cabinet doors, and then briefly touched on overlay options for face-framed cabinet doors. As mentioned there, the two most approved overlay options are ½” overlay and 1-1/4″ overlay. Here we’ll discuss ½” overlay which is probably the most accepted and certainly the easiest.

There are a few advantages to using ½” overlay over most of the other choices:

- Doors are smaller and therefore a bit less expensive.

- In corners or other tight areas, you can sometimes net away with less of a filler or no filler. (Note: With larger overlays, you can conclude the same thing by apprehensive the overlay on unprejudiced the one side of a given door, but that takes more forethought and sometimes requires purchasing a couple different hinge sizes.)

- In dinky spaces like bathrooms, these smaller doors require less clearance to originate.

- It’s easier to calculate the sizes.

Let’s say you have an upper cabinet doors that has a single door. For sake of the example, let’s say the cabinet doors size is 18″w x 36″h. (This cabinet is commonly called a W1836.) For determining the door size, however, the cabinet doors size is not the primary measurement: The opening size is the key. I judge the definition is distinct, but the opening is the fraction of the frame through which you can approach into the cabinet doors. (Some cabinets have multiple openings, but we’ll talk about that later. We’ll hold this cabinet has only one.) In mostcases, the opening size on this cabinet will be 3″ less than the width of the cabinet and 3″ less than the height of the cabinet doors. This is because the left, good, top and bottom framing pieces (called rails for the horizontal pieces and stiles for the vertical pieces) on most standard cabinets are each 1-1/2″ wide. However, don’t consume anything! Measure the opening!