Building and Hanging the Upper Cabinets

Welcome back to the shop, everyone. I’m back to the upper cabinets. 

The last time I dealt with these, I got them this far. There are two of them that are at this point, the other one is just a bit bigger than this one. There isn’t a whole lot needed structurally to finish these out. They just need the other side attached, the top, and the bottom. The bottom has all the weirdness of the power and the lighting to figure out, which is why I’m doing just one for now, and I can figure that out. 

I got the side and top attached because that was pretty straightforward.

As a quick review, this is the cross-section view of the upper cabinet. You can see the bottom panel laid on top of the bottom rail, as well as the under-cabinet lighting which will illuminate the countertop, and the plugmold at the back which is where all the appliances will plug into. There is also the hollow area, which is an electrical chase for all the things going on in the cabinet.

The bottom along the front will have this aluminum profile that has a diffuser that clips into it, and that’ll get some strip lighting mounted in there, which will be the under-cabinet lighting. The electricians already ran power for this, and all of the other under-cabinet lighting is tied together, so that when you turn on the switch, all of the under-cabinet lighting in the entire kitchen turns on at the same time.

And then along the back of the cabinet will be the plugmold. I have to put a spacer in there because I have the backsplash tile coming up in here as well. The power for this is already stubbed out as well, so I have to plan for the entry of the fees into the electrical chase. 

The second light system has to do with the bus bars in here. That will be the under-shelf lighting for all of the shelves. However many shelves are in here, they all have a light bar underneath, and that light bar touches the bus bars, and that’s how it gets power. So I have to get power to the bus bars, and I also have to tell the lights when to turn on: ideally, when you open one of the doors. 

To get that functionality, I will be using this system, which includes a driver with a switch hookup that I will plug some infrared proximity switches into. Those switches will control the lights, and whenever either or both of the cabinet doors are open, the respective switches will turn the lights on. So this whole system has to go into the cabinets.

In terms of doors opening and closing, I also have to consider the closure mechanism of the cabinets. I’m using butt hinges with this little doohickey I found, which gets mounted in the cabinet. On the door, there will be another magnet to close the doors, but the plunger resists the magnet a little bit, which allows the door to close slowly rather than slam. The downside is that each one of these blocks is $50. 

But because I want to integrate the closure system (along with the switch to turn on the lights) into the bottom rail, I am going to be making my own closure system. Which also saves a little bit of money. In order to do that, I have to keep in mind that these need to be a little bit recessed so that the doors close flush with the face frame. 

So I am going to get the holes drilled, and then figure out how to incorporate all of the other things needed for the bottom of these cabinets. 

This return piece is going to be installed after the cabinet is installed because this cabinet is going into the appliance garage cabinet. I already made that part and it has the same cut-out detail for the power. Because the placement of this is variable, all the little pieces inhere are going to run long for now and will get cut to length when this is actually installed.

Now, for this chase area, I have to make some rabbeted blocks to raise the under-cabinet lighting and plugmold to the right elevation. 

Here is what that looks like. This steps down enough so that I can have my panel stock attach here and enclose this chase area so you don’t see any of the wires. So now all of these pieces need to go off to get painted. 

Next up, I’m going to work on the corbels, which go onto the range side. The architects made a full-sized drawing of the corbel, so I can make a template of this. 

I think these turned out pretty nice! This will go to get painted as well, after I pop a few dominoes in here so they are ready to go for install. 

Everything is painted, so now I can start installing it all. 

Next I made the cover panel stock, but I’m not going to finalize it until it’s all installed and I know where that driver’s going to be so I can cut the ventilation holes. This cover panel is made out of the same moisture-resistant MDF I have been using for the rest of the project. That only comes in 3/4- and 3/8-inch thicknesses, and this panel is 1/4 inch thick, so I planed some 3/8 down to the right thickness. This will be painted white as well eventually, so that when you look up, it’ll be a really clean, finished look on the bottom side of the uppers. 

Before I get these installed on the walls, I need to take a look at this wall. I already know this wall isn’t plumb, because I learned that when I set the appliance garage. By putting some shims on my level, I figured out that that this wall is about 1/4 over about three feet out of plumb. To solve that, I’ll tack some 1/4 inch plywood on the wall so that when I screw the cabinet in place up top it is shimmed out at the top. There is also a dip in the wall which I will shim out as well. 

Now time to get them up on the wall. 

Here is the finalized install of the uppers, and they look amazing! It changes the space complete to have these in here. Fortunately everything worked out really well. Having the shims in there already made it pretty quick. 

That’s going to do it for this one! Thank you, as always, for reading along, I greatly appreciate it!  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave me a comment. As always, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. And till next time, happy woodworking!