I do almost exclusively face frame inset door cabinet construction. Recently my daughter bought a new home (fixer upper) that needs a new kitchen on a tight budget. I am thinking we will build frameless cabinetry for the kitchen using maple 3/4" melamine, with doors made from some ash that I have on hand. Questions are....., are confirmat type screws the best method of assembly as I have no case clamps and boring setups to use dowels? For finished ends, veneer or 1/4" plywood skins, or just use 3/4" ash plywood at those spots? Want to keep it as simple as possible but solid and nice looking. Doors will be full overlay. My normal box construction is 3/4" prefinished maple, dadoed and screwed, with 1/4" skins at finished ends, and beaded face frames, too pricey for this project.

John, my thought is to build your Daughter a kitchen they way you normally do, it may cost you slightly less to build frameless but the extra time you spend building a different way may be a push, in the end your Daughter will have a beautiful kitchen.

I had considered that but this may not be a home she stays in long, so we were trying to save on some material costs and my time is pretty tight. Might still come to that.

For resale value a nice kitchen can sell the house even without going overboard .

Agreed. Frameless can come out a lot less expensive and faster IF you are setup for and have experience with it. I would not expect your 1st go around to be cheaper, faster or the design to work out exactly as you intended.

...of course you could look at it as a foray into a new angle on your business. Nobody is as forgiving of learning mistakes as family - especially when they are getting a deal!

Predrill and use normal screws and use end panels to cover up those sins.

John, try frameless. You just might end up liking this style of construction. If you have the time & materials, make your end panels the same as your doors. Just make them 13/16" wider than the boxes are deep so the doors & drawers will look like flush inset. Another easy thing is adding 1" or 1.25" thick fillers finished to match the doors between the boxes, also protruding 13/16" like the end panels. This also helps give you a flush inset look with minimal extra work.

I highly recommend confimats. The step bit costs $25. You will find other uses for it. On finished ends, I just lamello or pocket screw. Or just fastcap over your confirmats, if you want to go super cheap. The FE panels set proud are good suggestions too.

If you don't have a bander, probably cheapest to have a shop CNC and band your parts, then you just assemble in a couple hours and you've got a kitchen completely done.

If she's not going to be there long, and your time is short, take her to IKEA. She'll come home with a flat pack kitchen that day. You'll only invest a couple days at the most, you'll learn about frameless, and can get back to making money quickly!

Rich and leo both have good ideas heck they are all good,, I can tell you are sincere and i love that,, send me your dimensions sketches and i will draw you a shop drawing with methods. easu enough as Frameless is all we do,,

you can veneer an end or panel, when panel we use a .75 thick and extend to cover door edge. look classy and thought out

be glad to help if you need email or call

All good replies here. If you think that this project could kick off doing more frameless cabinets for you, take a look at the Lamello P-system. We have a lot of guys using these for frameless end panels, among many other applications - shops typically have tons of other things they use them for too. The video shows the Tenso P-14, which is an invisible clamping connector that can be used on any angle and pulls with 35 lbs of clamping force - plenty for glue squeeze-out. We also have demo loaner tools if you want to try it out.

Video