Shopsmith Forums

Does anybody know where I can find style or design ideas for kitchen cabinets that will look a little more "high end" than the types of plans found in most of the books?

For high end woodworking, always look at, finewoodworking.com web site. For those of us that have made a living at woodworking, Fine Woodworking Magazine is always a dependable source. Good luck

I'm in the process of designing & building new cabinets. I found the best source of ideas was home magazines. Fine Living, Home and Garden there are dozens of them and all have advertisements for kitchen appliances. For high-end focus on adds for Sub-Zero, Kohler, and Wolf. Just find the one you like and start drawing cutting diagrams.

ctslacker,

Designing cabinets is not that hard. It can be helpful to go to your local box store for ideas, but you do not really even have to do that. The "boxes" can be designed to fit your aplication in any configuration that you need. You need to decide on the style of cabinet you want, i.e. european style or face frame style. Do you want to design a system that the lowers are built as a whole or one that the lowers are built from boxes that sit on top of a "foot" (there is a specific word for this, but it escapes me at the moment) that is seperate from the boxes. If you decide on a European design, you build the boxes and then the doors; if you decide on a face frame design, you build the boxes with face frames, and then build the doors. The thing that seperates high-end and low-end is the material used and the exterior looks. If you have the patience, you can make very nice doors. If you have the money, you can use high quality materials. I personally stay away from MDF, particle board and that type of man made materials. I use only hardwoods and hardwood plywoods for my cabinets. Even my shop cabinets. Things that you can add to the interior of your cabinets add high-end to them also. Lazy susans, slide out shelves, can racks, tip outs, etc. There are a lot of reading/teaching materials that you can buy or even check out from the library that can help.

Good luck,