FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, there can be some serious problems. The relationship of wood to humidity-changes is the root of the problem. Normally a wood cabinet door in your kitchen sees humidity changes all year long, but these humidity changes occur gradually so you don't see any damaging effects. When a cabinet door packaged and shipped however, these humidity changes aren't gradual; they are almost immediate and the result can be damage to the door. Humidity changes will result in moisture gain or loss from any cabinet door and that moisture change will be most rapid from the end grain...Like the end-grain on the panel cuts of raised panels and the ends of the stiles (the side pieces of the doors). If the doors are opened in a climate similar to where they were built and packaged, there will be no problems. But if the doors are opened in a climate far different from where they were packaged the problems can be severe and almost immediate. Shipping from a wet/humid climate into a dry climate will cause the end-grain of the raised panels and stiles to lose moisture at a rate faster than it can migrate from the center of the door. This can and does cause splitting in the raised panel and-cuts and the stile ends. Shipping from a dry climate into a wet climate simply causes the raised panel cuts and stile ends to absorb additional moisture which is not damaging to the doors. Our manufacturing facility is located in the dry climate of Arizona so we are able to ship into all 50 states year around without the danger of climate-difference failure.
The answer is yes and no. Painting a cabinet door won't cause any problems to the door but the paint itself may not age as well as you expect. Because some woods paint better than others we offer paint-grade doors in several wood types. We usually recommend Poplar or Alder for the frames and MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) for the panels. Woods with an open grain, like Oak, don't paint well because the open grain tends to paint with an Orange-peel look. One point to consider with painted cabinet doors is that the wood will expand and contract slightly with changes in humidity. This is normal and will occur even after the door is painted. The problem is that when the door swells and shrinks the paint, once dry, doesn't. This will cause cracks in the paint at the wood joints. It doesn't mean the door has failed, it simply means that the paint has dried and is no longer as elastic as the wood in the door. So with painted cabinet doors expect to see cracks in the paint appear at all joints a few months to a few years after the paint dries.
Yes you can. If you order Slab Drawer Fronts along with Cabinet Doors, we will machine the same edge on your Slab Drawer Fronts that is machined on your doors. But, if you are ordering only Slab Drawer Fronts and you want one of our other edges simply state in the "Additional Instructions" area of the order form that you want a different edge. We will be happy to email a PDF showing all of our edge choices. Just email us at sales@cabinetdoor.com and request the PDF or our edge details.
Certainly. Like every industry, cabinet doors has evolved a "Lingo" all it's own. The main differences are in the way the four parts that make-up the door's frame are joined together. With traditional Cope & Stick construction, the "Stiles" (which are the two vertical side pieces), and the "Rails", (the top and bottom pieces) are joined together in a modified Butt Joint. That is, the Rails are cut as rectangles with the ends at 90-degree angles to the sides. The rails are then "Coped" so the Rail-ends have the opposite (or inverse) detail to the detail on the Stiles. Then when the Cope & Stick frame is pressed together the joint between the Stile and Rail is a fine vertical line. Mitered doors are a little different. The Stiles and the Rails have their ends cut at 45-degree angles, with a hidden tongue & groove joint machined into the 45-degree cuts. Then, when the frame parts are pressed together, the hidden joint forces the Stiles & Rails into perfect alignment as well as providing superior strength to the frame. Within the Cope & Stick and Mitered categories, cabinet doors are further divided into Raised Panel, Inset Panel, or Glass Ready. Raised Panel doors have a solid panel made of edge-glued 3/4-inch wood. The perimeter of the Raised Panel is machined with a pattern that fits into a 1/4-inch groove in the Stiles & Rails. We offer 32 different Panel Cuts. Inset panel (or Flat Panel) doors use 1/4" plywood for the panels, and Glass Frames are assembled without panels. Traditional Cope & Stick doors can have various arch designs in the Rails and Panels, but Mitered doors cannot have arches. Because Mitered doors are not Coped, Mitered doors can have a large variation in frame design, where Cope & Stick doors have more limited frame design options. For instance, we offer eight Cope & Stick Stile Cuts and forty-two Mitered Stile Cuts. Outside edges are another option. The outside edge is a design machined around the outside of the door. Some edges are a "finger pull" design which allow the door to be opened without a knob. Some can even by very decorative and detailed. We offer over 30 outside edges.
The majority of our cabinet doors are shipped to high-end builders and custom cabinet shops. These customers demand superior quality and that includes the highest quality woods available as well as exacting machining and superior finish sanding. We use the same top-quality woods, and the same quality-control in your doors that we supply to the builders of million dollar homes. We buy only the best quality materials from the part of the country that produces the best quality and color in each wood type we stock. No wood products manufacturer can offer a higher quality wood than we offer, because there are no higher quality woods available. We buy the highest quality woods and if any lumber mills ever offer any higher quality, we buy it.
Yes, each door has a minimum width and a minimum height. These minimums are listed on the door style page of each door we make. We also have a minimum price for doors and 5-piece drawer fronts. The price of each door style can be seen in the "Please Select Wood Specie" drop-down menu of each door order page, this price is per-square-foot, with a minimum price of between $9.90 and $14 each.
We now offer our products to home owners through this internet site. For our first 30 years in business we only manufactured cabinet doors for high-end cabinet shops, custom home builders, and furniture manufacturers. With this website we are now offering our product direct to the public. Not only will you receive the same top-quality high-end custom cabinet shops and home builders demand, but you can buy these doors factory-direct and save the normal middleman markup.
We ship to all 50 states and all areas within each State. We use Fedex Ground for most orders and ship palletized large orders by Common Carrier.
You can enter your sizes, width and height, to the nearest 1/16-inch. The website will allow you to enter the sizes as fractions (26 15/16) or decimal (26.9375). Our cutting and sizing is far more accurate than the old tape-measure method used a few years ago. Our cutting and sizing accuracy is measured in thousandths of an inch. Thickness is measured with dial-indicators with a tolerance of 5-thousandths of an inch. Door components are cut with computerized saws with accuracy of a few thousandths as well. All of our doors are within 30-thousandths of an inch of the requested size as they finish the production process. However, because wood expends or shrinks with changes in humidity, the doors won't hold that tolerance forever. The reason we guarantee door sizes to be within 1/16 inch is simply because all woods slightly change dimensions with changes in relative humidity. When humidity increases wood products will expand slightly and when humidity decreases slight shrinkage will occur. A 4 foot piece of Oak, Ash, Alder, Cherry, Maple, or Hickory can be expected to expand or shrink up to 1/16" with a relative humidity change of 50%.
We use very large Timesavers Wide Belt Sanders to both rough sand, and finish sand our cabinet doors. We will finish sand to 180-grit and then remove any cross-grain scratches left by the Wide Belts in the rails. 180-grit is the sanding finish most custom cabinet shops prefer and allows the widest variety of stains and finishes without the need to either "rough up" the surface or additional finer sanding. If you intend to stain some harder woods like Maple or Hickory, you may find our finish sanding to be too fine for the stain. In this case you may need rough-up the surface with more course grit to take stain. The vast majority of the finishing options will find our finish sanding perfect and won't require any additional sanding at all.