Drawers and Doors for Bookshelf Base Cabinets – Cara Collection

The Base Cabinets can be configured any way you like.  All drawers.  All shelves hidden behind doors, or just all shelves and forget about the extra work creating drawers and doors at all.  Building drawers and doors does require some extra power tools that not everyone has.  You will absolutely need a table saw or a router table to cut the dado needed to make a rail and stile door.  If you WANT the drawer and door plans, here they are!  🙂

Doors

• You absolutely have to measure the cabinet opening (after the face frame is installed so you are measuring the height and width of the opening from the left to right  and top to bottom of the face frame “hole”).
• These are dimensions for 1/2″ overlay doors (See my post on overlays and hinges).
• You’ll need to adjust the size of your door to fit your actual opening.
• If you are using 1/2″ overlay hinges, you’ll need to add 1/2″ to the width of each door.
• Refer to my post on building cabinet doors for further instruction

 

Drawers

• These drawers should fit leaving 1/2″ clearance on each side for drawer glides.
• Make sure you check the actual cabinet opening for your cabinets as they are often not exactly what you planned on them being.  Adjust the drawer to be 1″ more narrow than the width of the cabinet opening.
• Follow instructions in How to Build a Cabinet Drawer post.
• Follow these instructions for help with Installing Cabinet Drawers

4″ tall drawer

 

10″ tall drawer

• Follow this tutorial if you want to create a hanging file drawer

 

Drawer Fronts

• The top drawer fronts are a solid piece of MDF or Poplar.  They are too short to do a rail and stile type drawer front.  Measure your actual cabinet opening and add 1″ to that measurement so you have 1/2″ overlay on each side to match your doors.  (If you did 1/2″ overlay on your doors.)
• Refer to my post on building Drawer Fronts for the larger drawer front.
• Install the top two drawer fronts making sure to leave 1/8″ clearance between them before building your last front to ensure you size it correctly allowing clearance between drawers.

 

You can get rest of the Cara Collection plans here!

• Upper Bookcase
• Printer Storage Cabinets
• Doors and Drawers
• Decorative Legs

You might also be interested in this detailed post on how Cara built her Oak Countertops and in viewing entire build process and get some helpful tips from Cara.