Making facades for the kitchen with your own hands

Mak­ing facades for the kitchen with your own hands is a good way to save mon­ey on buy­ing a kitchen set. Old fur­ni­ture can be giv­en a dif­fer­ent look by replac­ing the doors of cab­i­nets and cab­i­nets, installing doors that open upwards, com­ple­ment­ing the set with fash­ion­able details and beau­ti­ful fit­tings. And even the fur­ni­ture facades them­selves can be made by hand from rel­a­tive­ly cheap and afford­able mate­ri­als.

Replacing the fronts of the kitchen is a great way to update the kitchen set.

The fur­ni­ture facade is the face of the kitchen and the main com­po­nent of its style. Dec­o­rat­ing the head­set with home-made parts should be done only when there is a great desire to do the job effi­cient­ly and accu­rate­ly, because improp­er assem­bly can ruin even the best mate­ri­als.

For inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion of facades from sol­id wood or shaped bent doors, you will need skills in work­ing with wood, MDF or chip­board, as well as the avail­abil­i­ty of spe­cial tools.

In a sim­pler ver­sion, self-updat­ing the kitchen set with fur­ni­ture facades is lim­it­ed to tak­ing mea­sure­ments and installing updat­ed doors and draw­er pan­els in their intend­ed places. Fin­ished parts can be bought and ordered in fur­ni­ture stores. There is also a ser­vice for saw­ing and edg­ing select­ed MDF or chip­board pan­els. At home, with­out a spe­cial tool, it is dif­fi­cult to accu­rate­ly cut lam­i­nat­ed boards.

But even buy­ing or order­ing pan­els in a store will cost less than buy­ing ready-made cab­i­net fur­ni­ture. There­fore, updat­ing the kitchen by replac­ing facades is a com­mon design tech­nique.

Manufacturing options from different materials

Most often, do-it-your­self kitchen facades are made of wood. It is an easy-to-process, afford­able and cheap raw mate­r­i­al for the man­u­fac­ture of mate­ri­als for the fur­ni­ture indus­try. Kitchen facades must be resis­tant to deter­gents, tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty, and wood and lam­i­nat­ed pan­els meet these con­di­tions.

Do-it-your­self facades are easy to make from such mate­ri­als:

• sol­id wood;
• ply­wood;
• pressed (chip­board, chip­board, MDF).

To work with the list­ed types of fur­ni­ture raw mate­ri­als, com­plex equip­ment is not required; wood can be cut with an elec­tric jig­saw or a hand saw.

from wood

Warm and beau­ti­ful mate­r­i­al — sol­id wood — is tra­di­tion­al­ly used for mak­ing fur­ni­ture. Valu­able breeds can also be used for fin­ish­ing facades in the kitchen: sol­id oak or beech will look ele­gant and noble in a clas­sic-style inte­ri­or. But for a novice mas­ter, soft and light wood of cheap­er types is best suit­ed: pine or lin­den.

From wood, you can make 2 types of facades:

1. Flat ones are easy to make with your own hands from a fur­ni­ture board. This is a ready-made mate­r­i­al glued from sep­a­rate boards, so the size of the facade can be any, in accor­dance with the require­ments of the mas­ter. Shield pan­els can be smooth. They can be dec­o­rat­ed with over­head mold­ings. To do this, frames of var­i­ous sizes and shapes are made from a curly rail, which must be pur­chased at a fur­ni­ture store.
2. Pan­eled facades are more com­plex in design. For their man­u­fac­ture, you will need to make a frame (strap­ping) with a groove for installing the inside. Inserts, or pan­els, for a pan­eled door are made of sol­id wood, fig­u­ra­tive­ly cut­ting off the edges of the board, and ply­wood. As inserts, you can use a mir­ror or cor­ru­gat­ed glass. To make the door strong, all the details of the frame are con­nect­ed using grooves and their cor­re­spond­ing spikes on glue and dow­els. The pan­els are insert­ed into the grooves or fas­tened with a fig­ured glaz­ing bead.

Ready-made doors for the kitchen made of sol­id wood can be var­nished or stained to imi­tate valu­able species, pati­nat­ed to give an aged look, or sim­ply paint­ed.

From plywood

Ply­wood facades resem­ble mas­sive ones: the top lay­er of birch ply­wood has a pro­nounced wood struc­ture, some types of mate­r­i­al have a mois­ture-resis­tant coat­ing that gives smooth­ness and slight sheen. For the man­u­fac­ture of ply­wood facades, it is bet­ter to choose thick vari­eties (2–3 cm). This will allow you to install mor­tise hinges for fur­ni­ture, and the doors will be strong. Close the edge of the facades with a spe­cial tape, matched to the wood of the front side.

If there is no thick ply­wood, you can make beau­ti­ful facades using the tech­nol­o­gy of pan­eled doors. At the same time, a board about 2 cm thick is used for the frame, and the inserts are made of ply­wood.

With the help of addi­tion­al decor (mold­ing, paint­ing, pati­na­tion or stain­ing), you can achieve a good result by mak­ing updat­ed facades for kitchen fur­ni­ture with your own hands.

From MDF

The sim­plest option for mak­ing an MDF facade is to mea­sure the dimen­sions of doors and pan­els and order prod­ucts in a fur­ni­ture store. Hav­ing cho­sen boards with a coat­ing of the desired col­or, the mea­sure­ment results must be giv­en to the mas­ter. On pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment, the mate­r­i­al will be cut and glued on the edges. The cus­tomer will only have to pick up the facades pre­pared for instal­la­tion and hang them with their own hands.

When self-cut­ting lam­i­nat­ed MDF pan­els, it will not be pos­si­ble to avoid chips on the coat­ing along the cut line. There­fore, when cut­ting, you need to make an allowance of 2–3 mm around the entire perime­ter of the facade. After saw­ing the edges, process with sand­pa­per, clean­ing the cuts.

To glue the edges with your own hands, it is bet­ter to use PVC tape of the desired shade. The mate­r­i­al is easy to fix on the edges of the facade with a hot iron, iron­ing the tape through thick paper. If it is pos­si­ble to use a router at home, then it will be pos­si­ble to per­form edg­ing with a tape with a spike.

The choice of mate­ri­als for the kitchen must be approached respon­si­bly: the plas­tic coat­ing does not pro­tect against water, and in con­di­tions of high humid­i­ty, such facades quick­ly lose their shape. When using this type of pan­els, it is nec­es­sary to per­form edg­ing with high qual­i­ty, so it is bet­ter to entrust the work to a pro­fes­sion­al.

Facade from chipboard

Choos­ing a cheap uncoat­ed chip­board, you need to buy a film for fin­ish­ing the facade. You can cut a sim­ple chip­board with an elec­tric jig­saw, and glue the fin­ished facades with a film.

Chip­board has a coat­ing that resem­bles valu­able wood or is paint­ed in dif­fer­ent col­ors. It is bet­ter to cut such mate­r­i­al in the work­shop, pro­vid­ing the mas­ter with the dimen­sions of the pan­els and the loca­tion of the hinges. When cut­ting facades on your own, pro­ceed as fol­lows:

• draw a con­tour line on the front side of the chip­board;
• cut through the lam­i­nat­ed lay­er of mate­r­i­al with a sharp knife along the ruler;
• saw the chip­board with an elec­tric jig­saw along the cut line.

The edg­ing of the facade from lam­i­nat­ed chip­board is car­ried out in the same way as the pro­cess­ing of MDF.

Glossy

Facades with gloss belong to the MDF group. To cov­er such mod­els use:

• PVC film glued on a pan­el with or with­out milling on vac­u­um equip­ment;
• acrylic plas­tic with PVC or alu­minum edge;
• spe­cial tech­nol­o­gy of stain­ing with enam­el and var­nish.

It is impos­si­ble to make such a coat­ing at home. To make a fash­ion­able glossy facade for kitchen fur­ni­ture, you need to pur­chase ready-made mate­r­i­al. It is bet­ter to order cut­ting and edge stick­ers in the work­shop, because when sand­ing with your own hands, the shiny lay­er will be dam­aged, and the facade will not look as ele­gant as in adver­tis­ing pho­tos.

When using glossy facades, care­ful atten­tion to prod­ucts will be required. On a shiny sur­face, the slight­est dirt or fin­ger­prints are clear­ly vis­i­ble. The sur­face is eas­i­ly dam­aged by slight mechan­i­cal impact, and the film coat­ing is also unsta­ble to high tem­per­a­tures.

bent

Facades of non-stan­dard form are becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar. Fash­ion­able doors, curved along the con­tour of the round­ed cor­ner of the table­top, can only be made to order: they can­not be bought ready-made. But for a home crafts­man who has the skills to work with MDF and chip­board and has the nec­es­sary equip­ment, inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion of such parts of a kitchen set is avail­able.

The lam­i­nat­ed coat­ing is applied in a thin lay­er on the sur­face of the pressed plate. To bend a sol­id mate­r­i­al, it is nec­es­sary to saw through the thick­ness of the chip­board so as not to dam­age the coat­ing and leave a thin lay­er of the base (about 1 mm). There­fore, you need to have a cir­cu­lar saw with adjustable cut­ting depth. You can deter­mine the desired val­ue by mea­sur­ing the thick­ness of the sheet and by the exper­i­men­tal method: try­ing to make cuts of the desired depth on MDF scraps.

To make a curved door, you need 2 parts from a 0.9 cm thick sheet: the out­er one is slight­ly larg­er than the inner one. Mark the wrong side of each sheet into strips 0.5–0.7 cm wide where you want to bend the MDF. Deter­mine the cen­ter line of each work­piece.

It should be remem­bered that both for attach­ing the hinges and for join­ing with the adja­cent pan­el, you must leave straight sec­tions with a width of at least 5–6 cm. The bend should begin at a dis­tance from the edge cor­re­spond­ing to this val­ue.

After the cuts are made, pro­ceed as fol­lows:

1. on a pre-made tem­plate for bend­ing, put the inner part with cuts on the top;
2. fill the holes in both blanks with a mix­ture of saw­dust and wood glue, smooth the sur­face with a hard brush;
3. align­ing the marks of the cen­tral lines, apply the out­er part of the bent pan­el to the inner one with a dec­o­ra­tive coat­ing upwards;
4. smooth well over the entire sur­face, press­ing the adhe­sive lay­er inside and tight­en both parts with clamps, fix­ing them on the tem­plate.

When the glue dries, you can pro­ceed to fur­ther pro­cess­ing.

On curved facades, it is desir­able to install hinges with a push-open func­tion. This is a spe­cial fit­ting that allows you to make facades with­out han­dles. Depend­ing on the project of the own­ers, it is pos­si­ble to install dec­o­ra­tive fit­tings, as on oth­er parts of the fur­ni­ture set.

How is the installation done?

For hang­ing doors, 4‑hinged mor­tise hinges (frogs) are used. Dif­fer­ent types of such fit­tings have dif­fer­ent open­ing angles, so you need to focus on your own requests when pur­chas­ing them. For insert­ing fur­ni­ture hinges on the facades, recess­es are made from the inside. When drilling, you need to use a spe­cial noz­zle for a drill: a cut­ter with a diam­e­ter of 3.5 cm.

On the inside of the pedestal, attach the over­head part of the loop to the self-tap­ping screws. Place the coun­ter­part in the recess on the door and secure it. Hang the facade and adjust it with spe­cial bolts. Tight­en the screws after adjust­ment.

To install a lift­ing facade on a wall cab­i­net, you need to pur­chase gas lifts (lifts). This is a spe­cial fit­ting in the form of a rod with a reser­voir. When the door is opened, the lift locks it in the raised posi­tion. Installing the ele­va­tor comes down to fix­ing the brack­ets on the box and the door.

Front pan­els on draw­ers are mount­ed from the inside. To do this, a through hole is made in the front wall of the box. A self-tap­ping screw is screwed through it into the MDF so that the fas­ten­ers do not go through.

Handles — a practical decoration for kitchen furniture

Han­dles are not only a func­tion­al piece of fur­ni­ture. They com­ple­ment and dec­o­rate facades. In styles with strict lines (min­i­mal­ism, hi-tech), han­dles some­times serve as an empha­siz­ing ele­ment: large, shiny, but sim­ple fit­tings are used. Such han­dles resem­ble roof rails and are locat­ed both ver­ti­cal­ly and hor­i­zon­tal­ly.

The light­ness of fash­ion­able sets with glossy facades or made in mod­ern style is bet­ter not to make them heav­ier with addi­tion­al fit­tings. For such kitchens, ways of open­ing with­out the help of han­dles have been invent­ed, by press­ing the door. But some­times such cab­i­nets are equipped with spe­cial fit­tings, dis­guis­ing the han­dle as an alu­minum edge.

For rus­tic and lux­u­ri­ous styles, it is cus­tom­ary to choose antique han­dles, with a fin­ish that imi­tates old bronze or made of non-fer­rous met­al. These are frilly cast prod­ucts that should be com­bined with the decor of the facade.

The han­dles must be installed after hang­ing the facades on the pedestals. In order for the entire line of han­dles to be placed at the same height above the floor, you can stretch the cord along the entire front of the low­er tier. On this line it is nec­es­sary to make marks for installing the han­dle on each door. The same is true when installing han­dles on draw­ers or wall cab­i­nets.

How to prop­er­ly install the han­dles on the facades in each indi­vid­ual case is writ­ten in the instruc­tions for these prod­ucts. Holes for their instal­la­tion can be made in dif­fer­ent ways: through in the plane, closed at the ends, or oth­er­wise. When buy­ing han­dles, it is bet­ter to pur­chase sev­er­al pieces for repair dur­ing oper­a­tion, as these prod­ucts can be dis­con­tin­ued, and it will be dif­fi­cult to find a replace­ment if nec­es­sary.

Required Tools

For the man­u­fac­ture and instal­la­tion of dif­fer­ent types of fur­ni­ture facades, you may need:

• cir­cu­lar saw or jig­saw;
• man­u­al milling cut­ter (for emboss­ing);
• drill with noz­zles;
• a screw­driv­er or dif­fer­ent screw­drivers (there are bolts on the hinges with a straight and cross recess);
• for pro­cess­ing slices you need a file and sand­pa­per;
• elec­tric iron for stick­ing edge tape;
• mea­sur­ing tape or tape mea­sure.

If you want to make pan­eled facades for the kitchen with your own hands, then you may need a join­t­er to select a quar­ter for inser­tion, and a chis­el for mak­ing grooves in the strap­ping details.