Design Puzzle: Doors for a Wide Angle Corner
Cabinetmakers discuss solutions to an interesting design puzzle: doors that meet at the outside corner of an irregularly shaped island cabinet. August 16, 2012
Question
To mesh with the angular theme of a kitchen, we will be building an island with mirrored corners that sweep 120 degrees. We envision plain no-drawer two-door corner cabinets, with paired doors hinged outboard, meeting at a center stile (or no stile). We've sketched a way to do this, but are certainly looking for alternatives. The images below show the plan view, a rendering, and a view of a model depicting a carcass makeup.
The five-sided front center stile is a glue-up of three milled pieces, or is sawn from a single larger blank. Pocket screws help fix the stile to the deck and top, driven from top and bottom. A single adjustable shelf is shown. A 1/4" back is glued and stapled on at the rear.
Click here for higher quality, full size image
Click here for higher quality, full size image
Click here for higher quality, full size image
Forum Responses
(Cabinetmaking Forum)
From contributor I:
How about taking one larger door instead of two smaller doors, cutting it down the middle, and gluing it back together at 120 degrees so that the one larger door wraps both sides of the cabinet? It will look cleaner and you can delete the center filler in the cabinet.
From contributor G:
That's a big door with a big swing. Drop the center stile and have miters on the doors where they meet.
From contributor B:
If I'm understanding it correctly, the doors would be hinging on the 90-degree corners so standard hinges would work fine. One you could just have the doors meet on the 120-degree apex by mitering the edges, giving full access to the cabinet without an interfering stile.
From the original questioner:
We'll go with the two doors, lose the center stile post, bevel the edges of the doors where they meet, and leave a 3mm margin. Basically, the same 3mm margin we see in any frameless two-door wall cabinet.
From contributor B:
You might need some reinforcement on top to support countertop weight, but I don't think it'll be much of a trick. If I was worried, I'd rout in and epoxy a hunk of rectangular tubing or flat steel strap back into the main part of the island that would cantilever into the top of this case and add stiffness, or, as mentioned above, put a corner post behind the plane of the doors.
