Large Kitchen Island

[Brian Livingstone]

Hello,

I am about to start work on a large kitchen island project for my own home.  The island will be 8 feet long and four feet wide. 

The front of the island will all be drawers, nine in total.  The sides will be four foot panels.  The back of the island will have a row of cabinets with doors and movable shelves.  There will be a twelve inch overhang for stools.

I am doing inset doors and drawers with a two inch face frame for the stiles and main rails, and 1.5 inch rails for the inner stiles. 

I don't see why I can't just build one big face frame, and domino all together.  What do you think ?  I will assemble it onsite in the kitchen.  The boxes will be separate and attached by dominos. 

Thanks.

Brian

 

[tjbnwi]

One face frame. Thats how I'd do it. Build the boxes off the face frame.

Tom

 

[bkharman]

Hey Brian,

Two reasons for not doing one large face frame...

1) Depending on the wood, you might have a lot of movement on that frame and could cause the inset doors and drawers to bind or worse later on.
2) If you ever want to expand the island size later, it would be a PITA to make it look seemless.

Best of luck!  We just put a 5x10 island in our new house that required a full slab.  We went standard sized cabinet banks for it.

Cheers.  Bryan.