01 / 07
Kitchens
Ogee — Cyma reversa — a section this series commonly carries
How the work is built
Cabinet work for a kitchen is the part of a millwork shop’s output that is handled most and looked at longest, and it is built accordingly. A run of kitchen cabinets is a set of carcases, a face frame, doors and drawers, and a course of moulding that ties the whole run into the room it stands in. The carcases are cut from sheet stock or from glued panel and are square before anything is fitted to them; nothing downstream can correct a carcase that is out of square.
The face frame is stile-and-rail work in solid stock, mortised and tenoned or dowelled, and it is what gives a fitted kitchen its architectural face rather than the look of furniture pushed against a wall. Doors are made the same way, with a panel held in a groove so it can move across the grain with the seasons. A flat panel reads quiet; a raised panel with a bolection or an ogee sticking reads formal. The sticking profile run on the inside edge of the frame is the detail that most often decides whether a kitchen looks Georgian, Federal or plain.
Above the wall cabinets the crown is built up rather than run in one piece. A cyma recta over a fillet over a cove gives a deeper shadow and more apparent height than a single stock moulding of the same overall size, and each member can be scribed to the ceiling independently, which matters in an older house where no ceiling is flat. At the base, a shoe or a cove closes the gap to the floor and takes the abuse. Between countertop and wall cabinet, a light rail or a small bead hides the cut edge and the wiring behind it.
Stock choice follows the finish. Painted work is usually a close-grained hardwood such as poplar or soft maple for the frames with a stable panel material behind the paint. Clear-finished work is quartered or plain-sawn hardwood selected so that the doors in one run share colour and figure, which means selecting for the run rather than by the board.
Series facts
- Series01 of 07
- Profile shownOgee, cyma reversa
- ConstructionStile-and-rail and carcase joinery in solid stock and panel