Need to make enormous cupboard doors - help

[SlowSteve]

Hello All.

Mrs SlowSteve has commanded that there will be two very large units built into the kitchen - easy.

However, so that her delicate eyes do not fall on - and I quote - "all that clutter and tat" - ( which, it should be noted is almost entirely HER clutter and tat, although I shall not mention this as there are up coming tool purchases and fishing trips that may require approval and so I shall keep my peace..) the shelves need to essentially be turned into built in cupboards. The house is 100 years old and so there isn't a straight line in the house - so the idea is to build carcasses to get straight lines and hang doors from them

Again - easy enough. If this was garage grade work that its a weekends job.

But... each cupboard door is going to be somewhere in the region of 2400mm x 500m. Thems is big doors.

The simplist route would be to set to with some big sheets of MDF and have something Ikea like. My problem though is thats going to be very very dull.

Iff I make lovely cabinet doors by scaling up plans, my guess is that I am going to need to scale depths as well as widths and lengths and end up with some very heavy, very heavy LOOKING doors.

Would anyone be able to make any suggestions on what sort of options might be open to be to make something that looks good and a little refined but doesn't require block and tackle to install and isn't made out of 2x4's.

I'm also space limited, so anything that needs a lot of space, like building them as a torsion box etc - is going to bee tricky.

Thanks in advance.

Steve

 

[Baldyhippy]

Two 1.2 m doors one above another?

 

[Adam9453]

Use a solid sheet as the basis for the doors then add extra mouldings etc to the face side to make them look the way you want. The advantage of doing this is the solid sheet "backer" will keep everything square and solid.
Also you can use plenty of hinges to take the weight.
I'd suggest a 12.5 mm thick solid panel with 10mm thick mouldings etc fitted to the front to make it the style you want.

 

[RobinBHM]

Tall doors work ok using cabinet type construction, shaker style or profile and scribe.

Hang on concealed blum hinges, 5 or 6. These hinges allow for lots of adjustment.

Thickness 25mm min, 32mm better.

If they are a pair of doors, you will never get them to meet perfectly in the middle. What can look good is make a pair of doors a bit narrow, leaving say a 20mm gap in the centre. Rebate the back edge of both doors, then screw a strip of timber to one. Visually the doors look like they are closing onto a mullion and any poor fit is in shadow.

Tall cabinet doors look quite good with stiles, top and bott rail all the same size, then a mid rail twice the width.

 

[MrYorke]

Do you have a router table?

 

[t8hants]

Women are strange, my good lady hates doors and refused to let me make some for the kitchen units I made for her!

 

[AJB Temple]

Go retro. Use chicken wire instead of panels for part of the doors. I did this a few years ago in a bedroom with painted panel doors and chicken wire (In this case with cloth behind. Lightweight, say to make and distinctive. Lots of examples to copy if you google it.