Storage difference between framed and frameless cabinets. Let’s do the math.

 Main Line Kitchen Design does an analysis of the storage space advantage of frameless vs framed cabinetry.

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Many customers select European frameless cabinetry over more classic framed cabinetry because they want additional storage. This isn’t surprising since the drive to maximize storage space in a kitchen is frequently the motivating factor for many kitchen decisions. However, often the reasoning behind these decisions is either flawed or the advantage is overvalued.

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Let’s do some math to compare the additional space gained by using frameless cabinetry over more durable framed cabinet construction.

Frameless Cabinet

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Above is a cross section of a cabinet built using the frameless method of construction. Notice the cabinet box is simply a back, bottom, top, and sides. The front of the cabinet is missing. Below is an example of a framed cabinet. Notice the front frame on the cabinet that the drawer passes through and that the hinges and hardware is attached to.

Framed Cabinet Box

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Better made framed cabinets usually use 1/2″ thick sides and a solid wood  face frame with horizontal and vertical pieces  1 1/2″ wide x 3/4″ thick.  Better made frameless cabinetry uses 3/4″ thick sides and the cabinet has no front at all. This means that the hinges and drawer tracks are all attached to plywood or particle board sides on a frameless cabinet as apposed to solid wood on a framed line. However it also means that all roll outs, drawers, and pull outs must pass through the reduced size opening in the front of a framed cabinet.

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What’s the difference in storage between the two options?

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Lets do the math!

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First the inside of both boxes are essentially the same since the width of the inside of a cabinet is identical in both framed and frameless examples. And while the frame does take up a tiny bit of space it is far less than 1% of the total cabinet space. It is only in the drawers and the roll outs that space is reduced significantly by the moving parts needing to pass through a smaller cabinet front opening. This also means that both framed and frameless wall cabinets contain the same amount of space. This is because it is only in the base cabinets and the bottom of the tall cabinets that drawers and roll outs can be used.

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Each drawer or roll out in any cabinet will lose 3/4″ of space on each side so that the inside of every drawer in a framed line will be 1 1’2 ” narrower than in a frameless line. For an average cabinet of 24″ in width this means that the storage capacity of any drawer or roll out is reduced about 8%. More in narrower cabinets but less as the cabinet gets wider. So were a cabinet to have all drawers or all roll outs the most that the storage space would be reduced on average would be 8 %. A cabinet with only a top drawer would only lose storage space for that top drawer and the cabinet below would hold the same amount. So without roll outs a typical base cabinet with only a top drawer would lose at most 2% total storage. We are simplifying the calculations due to some other minimal factors we are not taking into account but we are also being liberal in the overall storage savings.

Framed beaded inset kitchen

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Most kitchen use more drawers and roll outs today so assuming that the bottoms of most tall and base cabinets use drawers or roll outs lets say 6% of all the bottom cabinetry is lost. Since none of the storage in the tops of tall cabinets and wall cabinets loses space certainly the overall kitchen won’t lose more than 4% of it’s storage space using framed vs frameless cabinetry.

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A 4% loss of storage space is not such a large number. By comparison choosing  a range and a microwave hood above it in a kitchen can save 10% of the total storage in a small kitchen versus a design using a cooktop and a wall oven and microwave wall oven with a hood above the cooktop. Dividing cabinetry to create small spice pull out cabinets or tray divider cabinets can lose a similar 4% in a small kitchen. Even adding decorative 3″ wide legs on either side of a cooktop or sink would lose 5% of the base cabinet storage in a small kitchen. 10% if you did it in both places.

Contemporary acrylic European style cabinetry

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Frameless cabinetry is less durable than framed cabinetry because there is no solid wood front on the cabinet. Cabinet fronts protect the cabinet box and frameless cabinet front edges are just 1/4″ thick edge banding at best.  Having hinges and tracks screwed to the solid wood frame and screwing each frame to the faceframe next to it is what makes well made framed cabinetry capable of holding up over a lifetime. Face frames do get in the way which is why frameless cabinetry is also called “easy access cabinetry”.

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Our take away from these space calculations and considering the durably issues is that we do not recommend using frameless cabinetry unless some of their other added benefits come into play. Most notably, there is no question that if you want very contemporary slab doors in your kitchen these modern styles look better on frameless European style cabinets.

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Door and drawer gaps on frameless cabinets are 1/4″ tighter due to how the frameless hinges operate and that gap makes a big difference in making a contemporary kitchen look sleek, modern, and stylish. Because of this the most modern foil, acrylic, and laminate slab doors styles will only be available in frameless cabinet lines. However raised panel and recessed panel door styles like the popular shaker style look fine in framed lines.

Frameless modern “Steam Punk” styling

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So before you jump into a decision of one cabinet construction type over another, consider your options and do the math!

Below are some related posts:

https://www.mainlinekitchendesign.com/general/what-cabinet-line-is-the-best/

https://www.mainlinekitchendesign.com/philadelphia-kitchen-cabinets/cabinets-buying-guide/

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Hoping that you will let our designers help you with your calculations and as always . . .

Bon Appetit!

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Paul, Julie, Ed, Chris, John, Lauren, Tom and Stacia

Main Line Kitchen Design

If you would like to check out all of our kitchen design topics, please visit the Reference Library

Schedule an appointment with a designer here.

Cabinet off gassing, Carb2 Compliance, VOC’s, GREENGUARD and what you need to know if you are sensitive to fumes.

 

The Cabinet world is full of confusing information about the fumes new cabinetry can give off after installation.

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Unfortunately the cabinet industry is not policed beyond a certain level and the companies that tout themselves better than industry standards are often less likely to be honest and reliable. This is because their claims are not being verified by independent laboratories and even some certifications from laboratories like GreenGuard are more about who bothers to pay to be tested than if the tested results are any better than average.

Testing kitchen cabinets for formaldehyde off gassing began in California.

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What is CARB 2? CARB is shorthand for the California Air Resources Board. This body governs air quality and researches causes and solutions to air pollution. Phase II of CARB’s Airborne Toxic Control Measure (ATCM) went into effect in California in 2010. The rule limits formaldehyde emissions from hardwood plywood (HWPW), medium-density fiberboard (MDF), and particleboard (PB), as well as household and other finished goods containing these products manufactured or sold in California. For many years CARB2 was the only testing standard cabinets could be tested to meet.

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The Federal Government created their own limits similar and more detailed than CARB 2 and these new rules went into effect this year across the entire US.

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After March 22, 2019: Composite wood products must be certified and labeled as TSCA Title VI compliant by a TPC (third-party-certifier) approved by EPA and can no longer use CARB-approved TPCs or products certified to CARB ATCM Phase II emissions standards. Only TSCA Title VI compliant panels and finished goods may be sourced.

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So under the new Federal Guidelines all cabinetry sold in the US that is made by major cabinet companies will now pass CARB2 emission levels.

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Individual carpenters making cabinetry will not be tested of course.

Under the new and old emission rules plywood is always held to lower levels of formaldehyde than particle board or MDF so the first step in reducing the off gassing of your cabinetry is to purchase cabinetry with all plywood construction.

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One of the most important things you can to do to limit the amount of off gassing that you are exposed to is to allow your cabinets to off gas on their own prior to installing them inside your home. This can be done in a warehouse or your garage. Removing the cabinets from boxes helps. Four weeks should vastly reduce any volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

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Even after the cabinets are installed you can still help reduce your exposure. Simply stay elsewhere for a couple of days and close all the windows in your home while raising the thermostat to 90 degrees. This should bake out additional fumes. Be sure to air out the entire house and bringing the home to a normal temperature before moving back in.

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Placing cabinetry over heaters or using cabinet boxes as heat ducts is also not advised if you are trying to limit VOCs.

One of the most misunderstood elements in this off gassing dilemma is believing that imported cabinetry will have higher off gassing levels, and that expensive custom cabinetry will have lower levels of VOCs. This is because of untested Chinese flooring a decade ago that had very high formaldehyde levels. Today all cabinetry sold from major brands will have been tested so this is not possible.

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In fact US companies that are importing their doors and cabinet parts from overseas will have had their parts given added time to off gas due to the shipping time to import and also because stock cabinetry parts are stored until assembled. More expensive custom cabinetry will be made specifically for the individual customer and will usually ship only a few days after completion. So allowing your more expensive custom cabinetry to off gas could be particularly important.

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Be careful of very small custom cabinet companies. They will not use ovens to bake their finishes between coats. Larger custom lines and semi custom lines will be baking their finishes sometimes even spraying a powdered finish onto their doors that is melted to create a more durable finish coat. Larger manufacturers will use catalyzed conversion varnishes that are much harder to damage and less likely to off gas. This is one reason why we are not fans of Amish made cabinetry. Read link

The most troubling component to this issue is that customers doing their own research are generally not able to evaluate the reliability of the search results that they find. Particularly since the cabinet industry does not have reliable results to find. Moreover the cabinet brands and the kitchen designers that will be the most assuring are generally simply telling people what they want to hear. As is so often the case the person that professes not to know the answer for sure is often not only the most honest but also the most reliable.

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One further test if you are particularly sensitive to chemical odors would be to buy a test cabinet from the complete cabinet design you intend to purchase. It is better to wait an additional few weeks for cabinets than to rip out a kitchen and to deliver the whole cabinet order only to find that you are overly sensitive to what you have selected.

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Wishing our customers a wonderful fall season. And of course . .

. . . Bon Appetit!

Paul

If you would like to check out all of our kitchen design topics, please visit the Reference Library

Schedule an appointment with a designer here.

Flush Mounted Ovens: The new danger appliance makers and dealers overlook.

 Appliance makers have a long history of of disregarding safety concerns in order to give customers what they want.

It usually takes a decade of calamities before building code is changed to force appliance makers to address the safety issues that they already know about but simply prefer to ignore.

For example, professional cooktops and ranges were sold to homeowners for residential use with high powered hoods for about ten years before building code was changed to require a replacement air system for all hoods over 400 CFM’s. Up until the building code was changed in 2011, untold thousands of homeowners and their families were exposed to carbon monoxide pulled back into their homes from their chimney exhaust by the powerful blowers appliance makers knowingly sold to residential customers. See #7 in this blog from 2015

Another danger that continues to this day and causes the death of a couple of children each year is ranges installed without an anti tipping lock. Small children open range doors and stand on the door tipping the appliance on top of them. Although securing all ranges is code it is often overlooked even in appliance showrooms.

The newest danger that is growing in popularity and encouraged by appliance dealers is installing ovens flush mounted with the oven doors even with the face of cabinetry. This gives a custom and seamless look particularly with inset cabinetry, but exactly how dangerous this is hasn’t been determined. Most cabinet makers void their warranties when ovens are installed this way and appliance manufacturers make no claim as to safety when their ovens are installed with the door of the oven flush with the face of a cabinet and the seal between the door and the oven box is set behind the face frame of the wooden cabinet. However appliance centers frequently showcase this look encouraging customers to ask for their ovens to be installed in this manner.

Dangerous flush mounted ovens in full overlay cabinetry

Most dangerous of all. Flush mounted ovens in beaded inset cabinetry. Oven seal is behind cabinet face frame.

It does not take much imagination to foresee the risk of a fire on a flush mounted oven should the seal on the oven door fail when the oven is on. Particularly when the oven temperature is high when broiling or set to the self cleaning cycle of 750 degrees Fahrenheit. Ovens are designed to mount with the rim around the oven covering the cabinet front and sealing the oven box from the interior of the cabinet such as shown in the photo below.

Safe oven installation with oven seal outside of cabinet.

Cabinet doors and drawer fronts are recommended being over an inch away from the oven for safety. So how can appliance dealers show appliances with the oven seal pressed against the side of the cabinet and the oven box actually behind the face of the framed wooden cabinet? The answer is that unless someone makes a law and changes building code appliance dealers and manufacturers rarely address safety!

Showing this flush mount installation of ovens is irresponsible. Appliance makers surely know this but once again they have put profits above safety.

Hoping your appliance salesperson, kitchen designer and installer protect you from this particularly bad idea.

During these difficult times we wish you a safe and heartfelt . . .

Bon Appetit!

Paul, Julie, Ed, Chris, Lauren, Tom and Stacia.

Main Line Kitchen Design

If you would like to check out all of our kitchen design topics, please visit the Reference Library

Schedule an appointment with a designer here.

/general/donating-or-selling-your-old-kitchen-cabinets-appliances-or-fixtures/

 NOTE: WE DO NOT BUY CABINETRY OR APPLINCES. PLEASE READ the blog below for information.

Customers often ask us whether they can donate or sell their old but in good condition cabinets, appliances, and fixtures. The answer is a most definite YES!

For clients that would like to recycle and not waste materials that others might want, donating these lightly used materials to Habitat for Humanity is a great idea.

Link to donate to Habitat for Humanity

Habitat advises that they accept 8 types of construction materials. Even cabinet hardware that is in good condition they can resell to help finance their organization. Keep in mid though that all materials must be in very good condition. Ask your kitchen designer if he or she thinks your materials meet Habitat’s donation criteria.

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Here are the three most popular donations with notes from Habitat:

1. Sinks, toilets and bathtubs
Donating is a great way to keep these bulky items out of the landfill. If you’re donating a bathtub or sink, make sure that they are not stained and do not have chips in the porcelain. If you are remodeling an older bathroom, your vintage fixtures will be surprisingly popular at the local architectural salvage store.

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2. Cabinets
Remodeling a kitchen often means replacing kitchen cabinets. Luckily, someone else may want those kitchen cabinets you remove, and recycling them will cut down on construction waste. Kitchen cabinets should be in good working order: Check to make sure that the drawer pulls work, and keep the doors and drawers together when you donate them.

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3. Working appliances
You also can donate working appliances like stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers* and washing machines. They need to be clean and in good working order. Many organizations will help these appliances find a new home, including Habitat for Humanity, home salvage shops, and secondhand stores like The Salvation Army and Goodwill.

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Even if your cabinetry, countertops, appliances, and fixtures don’t meet the standard needed to donate them to Habitat, The Salvation Army or other charities this most certainly DOES NOT mean that they couldn’t be sold on Craigs List. Link Here In fact people will buy almost any of these items if they are simply in working order and the price is right.

So if you would like to be charitable and see your materials reused, simply set the price low for these materials.

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Or if you would like to add to your kitchen renovation budget set the price a little higher.

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Hoping your new kitchen is everything you dreamed and MORE!

And of course . . .

Bon Appetit!

Main Line Kitchen Design

If you would like to check out all of our kitchen design topics, please visit the Reference Library

Schedule an appointment with a designer here.

Is your kitchen designer going to kill you?

 

Safety is a huge part of your kitchen design

An edited version of this article appeared in the May 2011 issue of the national publication of Kitchen & Bath design news.

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One of the greatest challenges for a kitchen designer is to create a design that the customer appreciates aesthetically and simultaneously provides them with a functionally well designed kitchen.  It’s equally difficult to just not make any mistakes.  And sadly, that’s something very few kitchen designers can actually accomplish.

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When customers show me designs done elsewhere, I can usually rattle off 10 blatant errors before I even closely examine the floor plan.  Even more alarming, many designs actually have the potential to kill.  And, these same fatal designs have even won awards.

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In the last few years, I honestly have yet to pick up a kitchen trade magazine without a featured kitchen on either its front or back cover having major mistakes.   Often they possess one of the possibly fatal design flaws listed below.  Here is my list of the 8 deadly kitchen designs that I see over and over again.

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1. Wall cabinet, spice pull out or an appliance garage too close to the cooktop or range
   Kitchens with hearths or grottos are the biggest culprits with the Professional high BTU burners being mere inches from the sides of the wood cabinetry creating a fire hazard.                                                                                                                                                                       .
2. Range too close to the window
   Most building codes require a range to be a minimum of 12 inches away from a window for a number of reasons.  A fire on the stove can jump to curtains on the windows.  Or a breeze from an open window can blow out the flame on a gas burner and allow gas to accumulate possibly unnoticed prior to a potential explosion.  I have seen many, many, examples of designs with the range actually underneath the window.                                                                                                                                                                                                      .   .
3. Range or cooktop on the end of the run
   Handles of pots and pans can be left extending out in space to be flipped onto homeowners or their children.  This is usually seen all the more disastrously in high traffic areas and next to doorways where people are entering the room unprepared for the foolish design flaw.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             .  
4. The deadly cousin or number 2 and 3.  A range next to the exterior kitchen door for all the reasons listed in 2 and in 3.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        .
5. Wall cabinets extending out over where there is no countertop or by themselves without protective bases below them
   Usually this tends to be customer driven.  Out of the need to create storage space literally everywhere in their kitchen, cabinets get put in places where someone leaning or bending over unsuspectingly can stand up and fracture their skull.  I actually know of a contractor that fractured his skull this way and is now blind.                                                                                                                                     .
   
6. This one is a little of a stretch.  But today many children and adults have respiratory issues such as asthma, severe allergies, or emphysema.  Placing cabinets with moldings approaching but not reaching the ceiling can create a space that is impossible to clean and yet accumulates over time inches of dust, dead skin, and dust mites.  This could cause potentially fatal health reactions to those sensitive.  I have seen where this is done intentionally to create a “shadow line” on the ceiling.  Once you get 3 or less inches from the ceiling, you must go all the way.                                       .
7. Probably one of the biggest issues on the kitchen design horizon.  Today’s powerful hoods coupled with tightly sealed energy efficient homes create negative pressure inside the home when the windows are closed in the winter and the exhaust fan is on.  Without a heat/air exchanger or a heating system designed against negative pressure the exhaust fan will pull carbon monoxide back down the water heater exhaust, the furnace chimney, or more dramatically pull the smoke right out the customers fireplace into their home.  Nearly all designers and appliance salespeople never even consider this and only in the most expensive and usually colder climate neighborhoods like Jackson Hole Wyoming are there any building codes regarding this.**Just a note:  12 months after this was published Pennsylvania became one of the first States to regulate this very issue. Presently all 50 states require replacement air systems for all hoods over 400 CFM.                                                                                                                        .
8. This one is almost no longer an issue but still exists.  Customers must have GFCI outlets within 4 feet of their sink but if they have an electric range with spiral coil heating elements and the kitchen designer places the range too close to the stainless steel sink, the 110 volt outlet issue could end up being benign in comparison to the 220 volt range, sink, and water shocker.                                       .

9. Added 11-23-2021 There is a new danger that appliance manufacturers and appliance dealers are now encouraging. Flush mounted ovens. Particularly with inset cabinetry this becomes possibly the greatest danger of all.

See explanation Here.

Beaded Inset cabinetry with flush mounted ovens. This is incredibly dangerous.

Kitchen design is a profession I love for many reasons including the creativity involved, the people you meet, and the sense of accomplishment when you do a good job.  But, the biggest reason I love designing kitchens is that it is an incredible challenge.

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To answer any questions regarding the significance of today’s date (originally posted March 15th 2011):

“Beware the ides of March”

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

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Paul’s speech on the topic:

https://www.mainlinekitchendesign.com/general/three-clips-from-the-speech-murder-by-kitchen-design/

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Call in to our recorded Podcast 2-4 pm Fridays Eastern Standard Time to ask cabinetry and design questions. Have designs ready to email for layout advice. Call 610-500-4071

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Hoping you don’t have any of these issues,

Paul McAlary

If you would like to check out all of our kitchen design topics, please visit the Reference Library

Schedule an appointment with a designer here.