Seems to be what everyone wants now.

How do you do yours?

This is my recipe:

1.) Casework 1/2" B3 Maple ply, then sprayed 2 coats white or other pigmented finish converion varnish prior to assembly on internal faces only. Assembly pocket hole screws.

2.) Face frames, Soft Maple, milled, assembled pocket hole and spray 3 coats. Attached to casework, with pocket hole screws.

3.) Final case touch-up and spray external 3 coats.

4.) Doors and drawer fronts, shaker 2 1/2" rails and stiles with MDF panel, sprayed 3 coats after assembly and sanding. For drawers, rails are 1 1/2".

5.) Door panels on exposed ends.

6.) Adjustable shelving, 3/4 Maple ply sprayed 3 coats.

7.) Drawers 5/8 Soft Maple sides fronts and backs, with pre-finished Maple ply 1/4" bottoms. Taped off and sides sprayed 3 coats clear conversion varnish. Pocket hole, or dovetail for upcharge.

8.) Toe kick covered with sprayed MDF after install. Fillers, Soft Maple sprayed.

Our bottleneck is finishing, the rest goes fast.

if youre using solvent based coatings you should be able to do your interiors in two coats. you could also have your ply laminated with "cabinet liner" and skip the finishing all together. For me Its either cab liner or melamine when I do white interiors.

Use prefinish on interiors unless it's a glass or open cabinet.

Stop painting the interiors!
How we do ours: We are a commercial only shop and make to AWI standards. Pocket screw construction won't pass. 3/4" doweled melamine boxes with 2mm PVC banding, 1/4" backs, 3/4" nailers top, bottom & top stretchers. Ladder kicks, 3/4" ply, normally finished on site with vinyl base. Shelves, line bore, 3/4" melamine, 2mm PVC bands. Drawers 3/4" melamine, doweled, 2mm banding. Accuride full extension 100# guides. Blum 120 clip hinges. All hardware installed while sides are flat on bench. A measured amount of glue is injected, case knocked together and case clamped. Drawers are assembled in a pneumatic clamp. Doors, fronts, integral finished ends often HPL, layup outsourced with hard glue. most parts are nested on the CNC. Rectangular parts optimized and sent to beam saw. Moldings are to customer spec. Lots of curved casework & moldings. All panel parts travel via conveyor system.
I think our system is pretty much the same as most Euro box cabinet companies. Reasonably labor efficient, durable product. We produce parts or boxes for small shops that don't want to invest in the equipment. Making the cabinets is the easy part. Dealing with the residential customer is the hard part, I'll leave that to others.

Prefinished Maple!!! The labor to paint the inside of cabinets is way too much. We have been there done that. If you have the means to build frameless cabinets then go that route. All 3/4" maple box even the back better nest on the cnc and faster assembly. If possible outsource all doors and drawer boxes. 3 coats of paint is good on most stuff either 2 primers and a topcoat or 1 primer and 2 topcoats. Pocket screws are the way to go if you build face frame cabinets. If you are dead set on painting the insides then I would build the whole cabinet with the faceplate glued and brad nailed on, putty, sand, and paint the whole thing in one piece.

If you do what Ryan said, leave the backs off then paint, then put backs on. Much easier to paint. But even in the back woods where I live the demand for residential frameless is becoming greater.

Hey guys,
We have been struggling with painted face frames and clear interiors for years. We do a lot of high end homes and end up just painting the entire exterior and interior.
We are trying to get more of a budget cabinet for more of the competitive priced jobs and that means doing clear interiors.
Issues that seem to slow the process down.
1. cutting cardboard and taping parts of cabinet off.
2. do you leave prefinished ply next to appliances or do you paint.
3. what do you do with the tops and bottoms of you upper cabinets? Our sides run top to bottom so you end up seeing some of the clear material on the tops and bottoms of the cabinets. Doesn't look good.

We would like to get back into the spec home/lower priced projects as they can go through the shop fast but seems when we are cutting card board, taping off, etc, it really slowing things down. Any tips/construction methods on this would be helpful.
Thanks

Its hard to start but you have to get your shop to flow backwards from what you are used to!!! Faceframes and finished ends go to the paint room flat, once finished the boxes are assembled faceframes attached (with pocket screws normally). The only cabinets that should get built and finished in one piece are open ones that have to get finished on the inside.

When we went this way we redesigned our wall cabinet so that the wall ends stopped at the bottom shelf and the bottom screw rail is inside the cabinet. Then the only thing that hangs below the cabinet bottom is the bottom rail of the faceframe. Then once all of your cabinets are installed you can run big pieces of 1/4" as skins to cover the bottom of several wall cabinets at one time. If I were doing cheaper jobs I would not worry about the skins. Stock cabinets are not going to be painted on the bottom and this is what you are trying to compete with.

Prefinished interiors look and work better in all cabinets not just cheap ones. The UV coating is stronger than anything that you can spray in the shop and will not peel if it gets a little wet. Once you figure it out and decide to go 100% prefinished interiors you won't go back. Its hard to get your shop to flow right it one job is painted inside and the next is not.
.
The easiest way to get your cost down on a cabinet and run way more through the shop is frameless!!!

Ryan,
Thanks for the detailed response. So you do it different from some other shops as they tape and cardboard off after cabinets are built, correct? How do you go about doing your flush/finished ends when everything is prefinished and get a good seam from the frame to the plywood? Typically we flush router those ends.

As far as frameless, we do about 25 % of that right now on our residential side. Being from northern WI it's hard to get too much into frameless as most of the shops we compete with do framed cabinets as well. It just seems most builders/customers around here are looking for a solid built cabinet. Not knocking frameless but we'll get the old schoolers comparing cabinets and they'll see a solid wood face frame vs. a frameless cabinet with edgebanding on it and won't see it as durable. We know that it is just as durable though.

You need to paint the exposed clear coat. Hit it with 150 sandpaper and just prime and paint like usual. Since you have a head start because it's prefinished, it'll come out smoother faster.

I've just applied paint over it on occasion skipping the primer and haven't seen any issues. I'd rather put the primer on it first, why take chances.

Pre-fin one side for tops, bottoms and exposed ends. Prime and paint as usual. All my cabs have the FFs glued on, I use the pre taped plastic masking to mask off the insides of the cabinets. Takes more time, yes. But I get to paint the backs of the FF this way.

I have found it easier to use a blind dado for FF cabinets, where the FF is dadoed for the tenon.

This way you can paint the FF separate from the carcass which would be melamine or some pre-finished material

The finished ends would be mitered or blind dadoed to the FF and then painted after the end panel is assembled to the FF

Frameless with white pvc 1mm banding or if color, most can be pvc matched. One piece mdf shaker doors and end panels. Matching toekicks and top trim of crown. If small upper cabinets near ceiling have glass doors, we use a laminate to match color or white melamine boxes and stack and then add end panels. Looks great and way easier .

View higher quality, full size image (2048 X 1536)

View higher quality, full size image (2048 X 1536)