Flat Panel Cabinetry

Cabinet Doors With Nothing to Hide Behind

A flat slab door is the natural cabinet for a modernist house. No frames, no raised panels, no applied molding. Just a clean plane of wood or color that lets the beams, the glass and the view do the talking. The catch is that plain doors show every flaw. A raised panel hides a wandering grain line or a reveal that is a sixteenth off. A slab door does not.

This page explains how we build flat panel kitchens that hold up to that scrutiny, and to the Palm Springs climate.

The Core Matters More Than the Face

Solid wood slab doors look lovely on day one and then move. In a house that swings between a cooled summer interior, open doors to a hot patio and very dry winter air, a solid plank door can cup or twist enough to stop closing flush. For that reason we build almost all slab doors as a veneer over a stable core, either high quality plywood or MDF, with the edges banded in matching wood.

Cabinet boxes are plywood. Particleboard boxes cost less and are fine in a dry cabinet, but the sink base in a kitchen with hard water and the occasional slow leak is exactly where particleboard swells and fails.

Frameless Construction

Most flat panel kitchens use frameless, sometimes called European, construction. The door covers the whole box, hinges mount inside, and the reveals between doors are small and even. It gives you more usable interior width than a face frame cabinet and suits the look. Full overlay is the usual choice. Inset slab doors, set flush inside the box, are a beautiful detail but demand very accurate installation and cost more.

We specify concealed soft close hinges and full extension, soft close drawer slides throughout. In a kitchen with limited upper cabinets, which is common under clerestory windows, deep base drawers do a lot of the work that wall cabinets would do in another house.

Grain Matching Across a Run

The difference between a good walnut or white oak kitchen and an ordinary one is usually grain. When the veneer for a run of doors and drawer fronts is cut from sequential leaves and laid out in order, the figure flows from one door to the next and the wall reads as a single surface. When fronts are made from random panels, you get a patchwork.

We plan grain direction and sequence on the drawings before anything is cut. Horizontal grain across long base runs is a strong mid-century look. Vertical grain suits tall pantry walls.

Material Choices

• Walnut. Warm and period correct. It lightens with sun exposure over the years, so fronts near a west facing glass wall will change color faster than those in shade.
• Rift sawn white oak. Straight, quiet grain that stays calm across a large wall.
• Painted or lacquer finishes. Good for color, which many of these houses used boldly. Harder to touch up than wood if chipped.
• High pressure laminate. Honest, durable and very appropriate to the period. A good choice for rental kitchens.

Hardware and Details

Slab doors can take slim bar pulls, recessed pulls, finger grooves routed into the top or bottom edge, or push to open mechanisms. We match the choice to how you use the kitchen. Push latches look clean but annoy some people daily. Toe kicks are often recessed deeper, and sometimes lit, to make the base run float the way the original casework did.

When Not to Replace Cabinets

If your boxes are sound plywood and the layout works, new flat fronts on the existing boxes can give you most of the look for much less money. We will check before quoting a full replacement.

Call (760) 739-6388 to talk through flat panel cabinetry for your kitchen.