Building Kitchen Cabinets: The Essential Guide for Woodworkers and DIY Enthusiasts (Taunton's Build Like a Pro)

I'm new to cabinet-building but experienced enough in carpentry. This was an extremely useful book for me, I've never done pocket hole screws or done biscuit joining before and my first standard kitchen cabinet was by far a solid success story. They cover all the basics from standard kitchen cabinet-making, to pantry cabinets, to non-standard cabinets like corner cabinets with detailed outside faces. I'm currently redoing an entire kitchen from scratch and I'm using the book extensively. I haven't done the doors yet, but they've got some extremely nice looking door plans in place. Covers general guides for planing and joining to make your own butcher block countertops, a number of different side-facing and detailed routing plans for both doors and out-facing cabinet sides. Detailed corner cabinet build plan. They don't go into detail on how to do biscuit joinery, but that took me a 5 minute guide on youtube and I was good to go. Aside from buying the pocket screw kit and the biscuit joiner, I'm spending roughly 100 dollars in materials and something like 6-8 hours per cabinet to build the two standard oak 36 inch base cabinets I've done. I'm picky on my own work but I think they look great. Some of this would be old hat to a guy who's done a lot of cabinets and I'm sure they'd be using staples somewhere where this guy uses screws, pocket screws and biscuit joining 95% of the time but I appreciate something that's going to last a long time if put together well. I've read through a few cabinet books before and generally they'd be very general in nature

For making built-in kitchen cabinets from scratch or adding to the ones you already have, this is a great aid. I am remodeling my kitchen, purchased pre-made unfinished cabinets and needed to add cabinets the manufacturer does not make. In adding to the "other" cabinets for the kitchen, the book gave ideas for design and construction - modified by myself - for a fantastic kitchen re-make. This was extremely helpful in knowing what and how to go about making the "custom" cabinets fit and "look" like the manufacturer's cabinets. Made the job so much easier. Taunton Press, publishers of Fine Woodworking and Fine Homebuilding have hit a home run with this very helpful book.

Overall a very good book to assist in layout and building of cabinets. The basics are covered well along with some important considerations for building and installing cabinets. It should be pointed out that there are many different ways to build cabinets and that this is just one builder's observations when building the style he prefers. I used this book along with another in the Build Like a Pro series titled, "Trim Carpentry and Built-Ins" by Clayton Dekorne which also offered some great tips for the project I was doing at the time. Trim Carpentry and Built-Ins (Build Like A Pro) The one thing that keeps this book from earning top marks is that there are flawed math formulas and measurements which can cause a great deal of frustration for users that are relying on those numbers. Other reviews have pointed several out. I found one when building a 45 degree corner cabinet and the numbers didn't work out quite right. After drawing it out full-size on the sheet of plywood I was able to build the cabinet to the numbers needed. The design of the cabinet was helpful but the math would have made it impossible to assemble if cut right from the numbers. I saw similar formula errors in about 3 other areas in the book. As a guide, this book is a good one to have around the shop. It assumes that you have an intermediate level of ability in the shop and will not teach you to use your tools. I would recommend using this book in conjunction with the other mentioned above and other resources to produce your cabinets if doing the first time. As always - measure twice, cut once. (Sometimes it helps to measure more than twice)

This book is superb. I'm planning to build our next set of kitchen cabinets, and this book has helped me determine what construction methods to use and how to ensure high quality. It's thorough, well-organized, and useful. You'll probably want to pair this with a book on cabinet hardware to help you think about what type of hinges, pulls, and drawer slides to use. Also, if you're not experienced at finishing, consider combining it with a finishing book.

A MUST HAVE for anyone wanting to learn about cabinet making!!! There are many books out there on cab building, and variations / styles to the design & process. Udo's approach is solid, flexible, and is presented in an outstanding fashion, and lots of photos Add Gregory Paolini's "Building Kitchen Cabinets Made Simple" " book / DVD and you'll have a solid beginning foundation to possibly a whole new career in cabinet building! I did Tip: The Kreg pockethole jig is absolutely critical to building cabinets!!

Others have commented on the measurement errors. I'm posting in hopes of saving someone some grief. I built two of his customized 45 degree corners for end panels. I was in the glueing stage when I discovered the dimension error on page 95. The outer dimension of the 45 piece should be 4 1/16" not 5 1/8". I was able to re-cut the pieces but obviously this was a major frustration. This is careless and inexcusable on the part of the author and publisher. With these errors this book does NOT deserve the 4+ star rating it has. I gave it 3 stars because apart from this glaring problem, I found the book very useful. After viewing a few books of this type I settled on this one for my first cabinet building project. There are many ways to build cabinets. Udo uses pocket screws and plywood boxes. I find this to be a nice compromise to simplify design, speed construction with satisfactory strength. I built a full wall of cabinets in oak for a media room, and another large wall of cabinets for a mudroom using this book as a reference.

I bought several "building kitchen cabinet" books for reference and sold all but this one. Udo Schmidt captures the all the details that a first-time kitchen cabinet builder needs to know, and he has included plenty of pro-tips for the more seasoned craftsman as well. This is a comprehensive, well-written manual that will allow you to build high end kitchen cabinets (if that's what you want) or their more basic cousins. Udo takes the time to recommend which drawer hardware and hinges to use (there is a universe of choices, so this was particularly helpful). If you buy only one kitchen cabinet book, this is the one I would recommend.

My husband likes this book. Great help for first time cabinet maker.