# Making the transition to freestanding kitchen cabinets



## kidwellj (20 Mar 2022)

I'm planning on building a kitchen full of freestanding cabinets using 18mm cabinet grade ply. I've built standard cabinets before and am trying to get my head around some of the design changes. In the past, I have tended to route a dado into the sides for the bottom to fit into. It seems to me that this won't quite work if the sides aren't extending all the way to the floor. And since I won't have a kick, what's the best way to add in some feet? I'd like to have a fairly simple style leg, similar to the below image, behind which I will hide axilio leveling feet. Should I just extend the sides and cut out the shape of feet and then do the same to the face frames, e.g. use a longer piece and cut out the middle leaving feet on the sides?

Any and all advice from experienced freestanding cabinetbuilders is most welcome!


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## Spectric (20 Mar 2022)

Not experienced or a kitchen manufacturer but I think free standing units are easier than MDF / PLY boxes, I made the units in our utility room and they were not hard but as mentioned elsewhere you have more chunky components and are not looking for the modern look.


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## kidwellj (20 Mar 2022)

@Spectric Can you explain a bit more of what you mean by chunky components? Would be very interested to hear more about how you did your build.


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## CStanford (20 Mar 2022)

Workshops of David T. Smith - Custom Kitchens - Collected (davidtsmith.com)

I'm getting inquiries on this sort of thing, and hearing from a kitchen guy I know that this is going to be the 'new' thing, which of course isn't new at all -- estate and chateau kitchens all had freestanding cabinets, kitchen dressers, and long work tables. Apparently not having much, if anything, screwed to the wall is about to be the new status symbol as far as kitchens go.

Love the piece in the photo -- really nice. Looks like leg and rail construction to me, with grooves for side panels - more or less classic hutch construction.


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## D_W (20 Mar 2022)

Having grown up in an old house with relatives who grew up in really old houses, this was sort of the norm. My parents' house was the summer house for wealthy folks, so there was some stuff built in (early 1900s) more than would be in a typical house, but in older houses like my grandparents house (mid 1800s) there wasn't such a thing inside...

....let alone an indoor kitchen in the original house. Just two giant fireplaces one right next to the other high enough to hang a pot in.


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## TRITON (20 Mar 2022)

D_W said:


> Having grown up in an old house with relatives who grew up in really old houses, this was sort of the norm.


Is this in Pennsylvania ?.


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## Spectric (20 Mar 2022)

kidwellj said:


> Can you explain a bit more of what you mean by chunky components?


With a modern kitchen they are essentially just open top floor standing boxes, 18mm with a front plinth. Some have plastic legs others the sides sit on the floor.

With traditional styles instead of butting 18mm sheet goods together to form a box you can use legs, corner post and such where the sheet material fits into slots, essentially frame and panel style that gives a more chunky robust look. I think this makes it look more like furniture and suits freestanding well. Look at this double sink unit, it is chunky, looks substantial and in my opinion has a lot of character, even using proper hinges.


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## D_W (20 Mar 2022)

TRITON said:


> Is this in Pennsylvania ?.



Yes, all in PA. typical for towns back then was a brick works , some quarries (parents' house is on a property that was a quarry - though it's a hill and not a hole, so it's not like living in an industrial area - part of the hill was just removed) and lots of granite and limestone in the eastern part of the state. Lots of houses with low ceilings and not much for closets.

I'm in the western part of the state now and it's harder to tell much here - I think this side of the state didn't have any problem knocking everything down every quarter century and building over it.


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## TRITON (20 Mar 2022)

Is it similar furniture, or inbuilt utilitarian ?


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## D_W (20 Mar 2022)

Both. but most of the houses that are something like 1900 or older are all freestanding - especially farm houses - as a purpose built kitchen wasn't part of the house and if one was added on in the early to mid 1900s, it may have had just a few cabinets near a sink and a lot of freestanding stuff (usually junk - like metal cabinets with formica tops. Not like counter tops, just thin metal banded tops on top of the furniture). 

Most of the united states discarded their wares for convenience after the depression until about the mid 1980s when the first antique fad started here.


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## DBC (21 Mar 2022)

Hi,

I usually make a few free standing kitchens each year in the post or hutch style described by Roy above. As you mentioned adjustable feet and the fact that you usually only deal with box carcass kitchens I just wanted to point out a difference between the two types of construction to keep in mind. Sorry if I am stating the obvious. My reason for bringing this up is that in my experience these country cottage style kitchens are often going into the ground floor of older buildings where the floors can be very up and down and miles out of level.

This can be a problem if you are required to run your worktop over more than one unit or you want a consistent working height around your kitchen: and a level work surface is the safest option as imagine swinging a pot of boiling water off a central island and clashing it into a different work surface as it is 20mm higher due to variations in the floor.

Several times I have told customers that if they want a free standing kitchen I will include levelling the floor in the price. For example, in a few months I will be making a kitchen for the 17C building I am currently renovating. The floor in this proposed kitchen - which to my knowledge started off as a stable then became a bedroom for a few hundred years only to become a GP’s waiting room in the middle of the last century - is only 6m long but rises and dips to -70 and +35mm from the level immediately inside the entrance door where the cutting block unit will be located.

While this variation in floor height is extreme I suppose you could deal with something a bit less severe with the modern box carcass style by adjusting each unit’s feet to level and then losing the variation by scribing the plinth/toeboard. But with free standing units you don’t always have this option if you want your feet to touch the floor nicely.

Having said all of the above sometimes customers who prefer free standing units like the sort of disjointed feel of disconnected units: I have even done one where I made units of different styles and colours to emphasise this. However, in my experience what is usually required is an island and at least one 2m length - and usually quite a bit more - of continuous worktop that will run over more than one unit. Furthermore, the butler’s sink unit really needs to be perfectly level to control water runoff and drainage.

So you have to he very mindful of the floors if you are making uniform furniture units. I am a bit worried that all I have done above is use a lot of words to state what was obvious. Sorry.


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## Spectric (21 Mar 2022)

DBC said:


> into the ground floor of older buildings where the floors can be very up and down and miles out of level.


I think that also applies to new builds, some of those floors are really bad and people find out when they want to change from lino to tiles, unfortunately tiles don't follow the contour of the floor. I have seen floors where it looks like the screed has either just be dumped and crudely spread or that it has migrated to one corner, my ultility room was 25mm high in the centre and with one area near the door 15mm low.



DBC said:


> is only 6m long but rises and dips to -70 and +35mm from the level immediately inside the entrance door where the cutting block unit will be located.


But is that not part of the character?

I am looking at building a double sink unit with three cupboards each side but intend to fabricate the feet so they may look solid but have adjustment.


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## kidwellj (21 Mar 2022)

Spectric said:


> With a modern kitchen they are essentially just open top floor standing boxes, 18mm with a front plinth. Some have plastic legs others the sides sit on the floor.
> 
> With traditional styles instead of butting 18mm sheet goods together to form a box you can use legs, corner post and such where the sheet material fits into slots, essentially frame and panel style that gives a more chunky robust look. I think this makes it look more like furniture and suits freestanding well. Look at this double sink unit, it is chunky, looks substantial and in my opinion has a lot of character, even using proper hinges.
> 
> View attachment 132101



Thanks @Spectric - that's immensely helpful. I spent the night searching for a decent photo of one of these 'in progress' so I could see how carcassing comes together, to no avail. Wondering if anyone on the forum (maybe @DBC ?) has a pic of WIP traditional cabinets like this for a kitchen? But I'm assuming this is much like benches I've built where you've got a structure built from well planed 2x2s and then dado slots that sheets slide into with glue and nails. In this unit above, I can see vertical legs, but it's a but hard to infer what's going on with horizontal timbers. Are shelves (made from sheets) providing horizontal stability without timbers?

One design issue I have to contend with is the possibility of a shifting floor height. I've removed a concrete pad and reinstated quarry tiles over bare earth (with a bit of compacted sand for levelling), which has made a massive difference for the room in terms of moisture dispersal and the reduction of dampness. But I can see some areas where moisture from the ground is finally evaporating properly and this is a bit uneven. So I was thinking it might be wise to build in some hidden adjustable (plastic) feet. Is there a good way to integrate these into this kind of design? I guess I could do shims, but that seems a bit less than ideal.


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## Spectric (21 Mar 2022)

This is a early stage drawing of what I am looking to make, using a double ribbed sink from Darwen. I will keep all the fronts looking the same, not as shown in the drawing but they will all be pull outs even though they will look like drawer fronts because this is the best way to avoid dead space in the back of cupboards and get full access.





In essence a bottom with legs, eight frames on this with rear panels sliding into slots and facr frame look without the face frame. The sink unit is more substantial due to the weight of the sink but basicaly sits between thye two sets of three pull outs. I would leave the panels floating in the slots to allow for any movement rather than glue or pin.


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## CStanford (21 Mar 2022)

D_W said:


> Having grown up in an old house with relatives who grew up in really old houses, this was sort of the norm. My parents' house was the summer house for wealthy folks, so there was some stuff built in (early 1900s) more than would be in a typical house, but in older houses like my grandparents house (mid 1800s) there wasn't such a thing inside...
> 
> ....let alone an indoor kitchen in the original house. Just two giant fireplaces one right next to the other high enough to hang a pot in.



Nothing worse than walking into the kitchen of a house from that era and seeing uppers and lowers screwed to the wall. Even custom stuff can look out of place, usually does.

I'm hearing people want to be able to move the pieces around, so that effectively precludes a row of otherwise freestanding cabinets that are then overlaid with a continuous countertop. Also integral to the design is the return of a proper walk-in pantry, rather than storing bulk goods, cookware, small electrics, etc. in lower cabinets -- hard on the back, too dark to see what's in there, etc., etc.


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## kidwellj (21 Mar 2022)

@CStanford - that's exactly what we were thinking here, alongside benefits of better vapour dispersion, being able to non-destructively change kitchen layout as our uses of the space change over the years seems like a much better use of all that high quality timber.


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## kidwellj (21 Mar 2022)

Spectric said:


> This is a early stage drawing of what I am looking to make, using a double ribbed sink from Darwen. I will keep all the fronts looking the same, not as shown in the drawing but they will all be pull outs even though they will look like drawer fronts because this is the best way to avoid dead space in the back of cupboards and get full access.
> 
> View attachment 132104
> 
> In essence a bottom with legs, eight frames on this with rear panels sliding into slots and facr frame look without the face frame. The sink unit is more substantial due to the weight of the sink but basicaly sits between thye two sets of three pull outs. I would leave the panels floating in the slots to allow for any movement rather than glue or pin.


Looks like I'm doing something pretty similar to you. We've got a double belfast for the sink, so I need to properly reinforce the bottom. What's your plan for finishing the fronts if you aren't doing face frames? Just doors and strips? Interesting point also about leaving the panels to shift about a bit - so you're joining the timbers, I'd assume - what are you using for vertical timbers that connect the posts? I've got a couple large pieces of upcycled quartz that I'm going to use for counters, but can't decide if I want to use a long piece or split into multiple units ...


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## Jacob (21 Mar 2022)

N


kidwellj said:


> I'm planning on building a kitchen full of freestanding cabinets using 18mm cabinet grade ply. I've built standard cabinets before and am trying to get my head around some of the design changes. In the past, I have tended to route a dado into the sides for the bottom to fit into. It seems to me that this won't quite work if the sides aren't extending all the way to the floor. And since I won't have a kick, what's the best way to add in some feet? I'd like to have a fairly simple style leg, similar to the below image, behind which I will hide axilio leveling feet. Should I just extend the sides and cut out the shape of feet and then do the same to the face frames, e.g. use a longer piece and cut out the middle leaving feet on the sides?
> 
> Any and all advice from experienced freestanding cabinetbuilders is most welcome!
> 
> View attachment 132085


Nice cabinet, shame not to make it with real wood.
Foot levelling - you only need to adjust one (of four) to make it fit a (slightly) uneven surface but there's usually enough flexion in a piece of furniture to take care of small variations.


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## D_W (21 Mar 2022)

CStanford said:


> Nothing worse than walking into the kitchen of a house from that era and seeing uppers and lowers screwed to the wall. Even custom stuff can look out of place, usually does.
> 
> I'm hearing people want to be able to move the pieces around, so that effectively precludes a row of otherwise freestanding cabinets that are then overlaid with a continuous countertop. Also integral to the design is the return of a proper walk-in pantry, rather than storing bulk goods, cookware, small electrics, etc. in lower cabinets -- hard on the back, too dark to see what's in there, etc., etc.



The countertop will be an interesting thing to deal with. As far as what looks better, a kitchen full of movable cabinets with a cook stove would look better to me - though it won't be a cook stove necessarily, just something with an aesthetic that goes with freestanding cabinets. 

The countertop thing will be interesting because I think most of the crowd my wife's age thinks they need to have 25 linear feet of counter space to make a salad. If I recall watching my grandmother work in her own kitchen (moved out of a farmhouse into a golden girls ranch type house), she didn't move around too much despite having more space. Probably old habit. 

Yes on the pantry. Why people are too good for pantries now is beyond me. I guess nobody wants to give up space to something unstylish that intentionally doesn't hide everything in it, but it beats the hell out of reaching down to the back area in a base cabinet. Wish I had the option.


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## Spectric (21 Mar 2022)

My intention is to have a large freestanding pantry unit and no wall cabinets, keep the area looking open rather than cluttered.


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## D_W (21 Mar 2022)

SIL did this in a house with PA dutch proportions (not many downstairs room, so kitchen is very large and has provisions to eat in and still have a lot of work room) - I didn't think she'd be pleased as the kitchen that she took out literally had about 30 base and wall units in it, but the result is only two pantry-like cabinets for tall storage and nothing else on the walls. It looks fantastic. 

Size of the kitchen only mentioned because the cabinet count that was in before really was far greater than a normal homeowner would need, and just resulted in keeping all kinds of little used stuff in the cabinets.


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## D_W (21 Mar 2022)

I can't help but mention one other thing that seems common where I grew up along with the freestanding kitchen stuff...


The under-stairs bathroom. Said houses would not have had indoor plumbing, especially not all over the house, and the first toilets that went into the house went in by boxing in stairs and putting a door on the back of the box. 

The toilet obviously goes toward the back, which leads to an interesting dilemma - you can stand and pee and lean back (the stairs are too low to stand straight up) or work on your stabilizing muscles and go knee-flexed or sit. 

When I grew up, referring to someone who "sits while they pee" when talking about men was not a compliment (I recognize for older aged folks, this is an asset, though for a multitude of reasons). 

I spent my entire youth at my grandparents house trying to find the most comfortable way of going to the bathroom without resorting to sitting. never conquered it.


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