Making a Craft Island (Part 2)

Continuing from Making a Craft Island – part 1, in this post I’ll cover making and installing the faceframe. Once the cabinets were in the chosen location where they would stay forever (or so I thought…) I clamped 2 cabinets side by side and screwed them together.

Top and bottom.

Front and back.

Then, after they were screwed together, I taped a piece of beadboard onto both sides of the cabinet and then measured and built the face frames.

I wanted to make sure the face frame created a lip to hide the edge of the beadboard.

I built two face frames, ONE for each side of the island.

Using one face frame to attach to two cabinets made it look like one big cabinet instead of two and it further secured the connection between the attached cabinets.

To secure the face frames to the cabinets, I used glue and a lot of clamps — on one side.

I primed and painted the face frames before I glued them onto the cabinet so I wouldn’t have to tape off the melamine.  I’m all about cutting corners where I can.  *So, I put felt bumpers on the clamps to protect the paint job!

On the other side, because every single clamp I own was being used on the other face frame, I used pocket holes.

I was putting drawers in that cabinet so no one will ever see the inside of the actual cabinet box, so it worked.   *I wouldn’t use this method for any other cabinet face frame application.

I just used my body weight to hold the face frame in place while I screwed in the pocket hole screws.

I had to steal a couple clamps for the top and bottom but enough time had passed by then and the other cabinet was setting already.

Then I just left them alone for a day and let the glue completely dry and set.