Sometimes when you order kitchen cabinets too exactly so you may need to narrow a kitchen cabinet and make it smaller because you were surprised to find out that the wall or other kitchen appliance took a little bit more space then you had planned for.
How to narrow a kitchen cabinet
There is a very limited space to reducing the width of a base cabinet or wall cabinet. The kitchen cabinet face frames have a 1/4inch overhang on the left and right of the cabinet. So if you remove that 1/4 inch from the cabinet on both sides then this means you can gain a 1/2 inch per cabinet.
How to cut down cabinet sides a 1/4 inch
Steps
- Remove the door and drawers.
- Use painters tape to run down the edge you are cutting to prevent uplift of wood chipping.
- A fine finish blade with maximum amount of teeth will help you achieve a cleaner cut especially if your cabinets have laminate finish, for wood finish the blade can have less teeth just in great shape.
- Mark your cutting line on top of painters tape very fine and exact so you know to stay on one side of line the entire time.
- Clamp down a straight edge to make sure your cut is clean and straight forward.
- Once your cut is made if any edges are irregular then light sand them down and color them in with matching marker or wax stick.
Why and How to cut a kitchen cabinet in half
Why would you cut a kitchen cabinet in half
We all make mistakes and sometimes the cabinet we ordered is the wrong one or the manufacture made the error to send a larger size then needed. If you are caught in this situation then just know there is a way to cut a cabinet in half successfully.
If you are going to install a countertop asap then you will need a cabinet in place or you can temporary frame out a missing cabinet with a 2×4 build out.
Lets cut the cabinet in half step by step
In order to cut down the cabinet in half then lets name all the individual cabinet pieces that will be affected.
- Front Face Frame
- Left Side Wall
- Right Side Wall
- Back Panel Wall
- Bottom Floor Panel
- Toe Kick Strip
- Cabinet Drawer with Face Frame
- Cabinet Door with Face Frame
If you will continue to cut this cabinet in half know that you will need to completely disassemble the kitchen cabinet and that the measure on cutting each piece will be different because the way each cabinet is assembled.
The pieces you will “cut down” are the following:
- Face Frame
- Back Panel Wall
- Bottom Panel
- Toe Kick Strip
Cut all these items that were mentioned to the desired length, and keep in mind that the face frame will be cut down where the horizontal pieces meet the vertical wood piece on side of your choice. The other piece can be cut down from any side preferably all on the same side.
Last step is to re-glue, re-nail, and re-assemble
You will need to reorder your cabinet drawer and door face frame because in order to get a fine finish you will need the profile router bits and color matched spray paint to achieve that.
