Waka said:
I really like the concept of kick boxes as opposed to legs on the cabinets, is this a common thing on your side of the pond?
In May of 1959 I was the architect on a major re-model of a Southern California home originally built in 1923. There had been some significant settling.
Although I had never seen separate foundations or "kick boxes" used, to my way of thinking that approach seemed best when dealing with such uneven floors. The exposed floor was to be brewery tile, under the range and dish washer, but not the cabinets.
By building the kick boxes separately from the base cabinet boxes, those could be installed first. This way the cabinets themselves would not interfere with the tile installation. Back in the shop the base cases could be built complete with the lower shelf also the bottom of the case, using a rabbit instead of a dado.
Subsequently, whenever I had the choice I have specified separate kick boxes. Over the past 52 years I have advocated kick boxes when teaching cabinet design and construction. These days my cabinet shop is exclusively wholesale. Nearly all of my designer/installer clients have known me for many years, usually having first met me while taking design courses I have taught. Of course my shop builds custom cabinets however the specification dictate. I do not remember a recent kitchen cabinet job we have built without using kick boxes.
The same is true for the commercial and office base cabinet jobs we build. On the other hand, the bathroom and lavatory cabinets we build tend to be one-piece bases, so most of those use a conventional toe-kick construction.
In the TOH video that was one of our competitor firm building the cases for Larry Bucklan. That firm also advocates separate kick boxes. Larry and I buy most of our Festools from Eagle Tool of Los Angeles. We have known one another for years. He believes strongly in kick boxes.
We use different brands of sliding table saws, but essentially they are similar.
Everyone builds doors and face frames using methods we find to work best for us. The cabinet maker working for me who specializes in frames and doors had owned a shop with an older model of the same brand of slider saw as Larry Bucklan owns. My guy was one of us who got up in the middle of the night to pick up our Kapex just after midnight the say Festool released them. He was the first cabinet maker I hired, which was before I finalized the shopping list of equipment. By then both of us were experienced using Kapex. He told me that his preference making doors and frames was to use his Kapex for cross cuts and the slider saw for rips. Together we looked long and hard at the same brand Larry owns, but eventually we decided on the brand I purchased.
Indeed, we do use a lot of Dominoes.
