How the constructor builds a kitchen

A kitchen in the cabinet designer is a row of standard boxes on one short list of rules — the rules a workshop uses without saying them. This page writes them down: what the generator does with a width and a height, and why, so that what you draw is what the shop can build. Where a number is the manufacturer's it says so; where it is ours it says that too.

The kitchen's lines

A kitchen is set out to four heights, measured from the floor and asked for once, on the first box:

Every box follows the lines. Change one and every box is rebuilt to it; a box whose height you typed by hand keeps it and only moves with the line — a run under a stepped ceiling starts level and finishes where each wall allows.

The box

A base unit stands on legs: the sides stop at the top of the legs, four adjustable feet carry the box (six over 900 wide), 50 mm in from the sides and no more than 550 apart, and a plinth runs in front of the legs across the whole run, set back 50, held by clips. Legs come in 100, 120 and 150 mm. A wall unit hangs on wall hangers — Emuca Levelup 3 or Hook, with their holes 11 mm from the back edge of the side and the plate on the wall — and has no legs. A tall unit stands on legs like a base.

A base box has two rails across its top instead of a panel, 80 mm wide, flush with the sides; the worktop is its lid, and the sink, the hob and the socket box come down through the open top. A sink base turns the front rail on edge, and has no back: the waste, the trap and the stop taps live there. A hob over a box takes both rails away.

The back is 3 mm hardboard. On a base it is laid over the rear and pinned; on a wall unit it goes into a groove — 16 mm in from the back edge, 8 deep — because the unit hangs off its back and the groove catches it on all four edges and holds the box square. A grooved back is cut to the opening plus the groove on every side, and the sides, top and bottom run the full depth; every shelf gets shorter by the inset.

Carcasses run 16 mm in a kitchen and 18 in a wardrobe; fronts 19. The joints are confirmats — a 7 mm hole 8 deep for the head and a 5 mm hole through, both from the marked face, into the edge of the next part — or cams (Emuca T15): the cam housing from the hidden face, the bolt in the edge, a dowel beside it. One joint per place, never both.

Doors

One leaf up to 600 mm wide, two over that; hung on the right unless you say otherwise; overlay by default, inset where you ask. Cup hinges, Ø35 cup 11.3 deep, 3 to 7 mm from the edge; the plate on the 32 mm line, 37 back from the front edge. How many hinges follows the leaf: two up to 900 mm or 8 kg, three to 1600 or 13 kg, four to 2000 or 17 kg, five to 2400 or 20 kg; the end hinges 90 from the leaf's edges, the rest spread evenly — and never where a shelf pin or a runner screw already uses the line.

A leaf starts on the plinth — at the legs' height — and over a pelmet drops 20 mm below the box to hide the pelmet's edge. A leaf can be split at every fixed shelf, a door to each row, each with its own hinges. Push-to-open fits a Push Lite catch on the side and a magnet; a sprung hinge needs none.

Drawers

A drawer base is a stack of fronts and, behind each, a box on runners. The systems in the catalogue and how they are cut:

The fronts divide the opening evenly, each the opening ÷ N; a handleless front is made 30 mm short at the top so a hand gets behind it. The whole stack is lifted 3 mm off the floor of the opening so the bottom drawer does not scrape. The cabinet-side holes are Ø6.3 at 37, 165 and 261 mm back from the front edge of the side, along two lines 24.5 and 36.5 above the runner's lowest plane — Emuca's numbers. The drawer bottom and back are always their own 16 mm board. An inner drawer rides behind the top front on runners of its own, with an aluminium profile for a front. Side-by-side drawers need a divider between them: nothing else carries the middle runners.

Handleless: Gola

A handleless kitchen uses Emuca's Gola profiles. The L profile (89000) runs along the top of a base, inside the box: its lip flush with the sides' front edges, its leg 20 mm inside, notched into the sides with a rounded notch so one profile runs through several boxes; the fronts start 30 mm below the top of the box — 58 under built-in appliances, as the sheet says. The C profile (89001) sits between drawer fronts, and in a tall unit between the big door and the small one below it. The vertical profile (81626) stands on the edge of a tall unit's side. Each profile is one piece along the run, fixed with two brackets per box (89235), and all of it is counted on the order. The notches go out as router templates.

The worktop

A worktop runs over the whole run of base units: one board for the row, cut into pieces no longer than the blank. Laminate 38 comes as a 4100 × 650 blank the shop saws itself, so it goes into the cut map as a board of its own, grain across, the front edge postformed, the open ends banded in the same decor; the default is Egger F052 ST75. Solid surface 20 and stone are made by the supplier to the drawing, so they go on the stone order, not the saw. The top overhangs the fronts by 20 and the free end by 20; it stops short of a tall unit's end panel. A sink and its tap are let into it over the box marked for them; a hob cuts the rails of the box beneath. A splashback in the worktop's material can stand behind it up to the wall units.

The pelmet and the light

Under a run of wall units a pelmet in the fronts' board closes the gap: one board for the row, set back 30 from the fronts, in pieces no longer than 2600, cut on the saw with everything else. The doors drop 20 below the boxes to hide its edge. An LED strip sits in a groove along its underside, 12 × 8, 30 from the front — our numbers, read the profile's sheet for yours. A hood unit takes no pelmet, and the row breaks at it. The same LED card lights a shelf in a niche or a fixed shelf inside a box, with a channel for the wire routed up the side.

End panels and fillers

A box that stands free shows its sides; a board in the fronts' decor covers the whole end, floor to top, back to the face of the doors. A box in an alcove is closed to the walls with fillers, scribed to the wall. The two never meet on one side: a side has either a panel or a filler. Both go down with the doors over a pelmet.

Appliances

An appliance is drawn to the manufacturer's sheet and the box is built round it. A dishwasher (Bosch SMV6ZCX16E, or the 45 cm SPV6ZMX23E) is no box at all — a front and the run's plinth; its niche wants 550 deep and the front no taller than 725, and the warnings say so when a run is shallower. An oven base carries the oven in a 578 niche with a drawer or a shelf beside it; an oven housing stacks the oven in a tall unit. A hood goes in the bottom of its wall unit with the duct up through the shelf and the top (Bosch DBB67AM60), or in a plain hood unit. A fridge goes in a housing or in a frame of two tall sides round a free-standing one (Bosch KFN96APEA). A hob sits over any base and takes its rails. The waste bin — Emuca Recycle 2 × 24 — pulls out on one front under the sink.

Islands

An island is a stone shell — a top and two waterfall ends on a support panel — with base boxes set inside it: a dishwasher, a sink base with the sink and tap, drawers. One side faces the room with 400 for the knees, or both sides take boxes back to back. The boxes inside are built to the shell's height less the stone and have no top of their own.

What the warnings catch

• A side taller than the sheet — add a top box or cut the height.
• A niche shallower or lower than the appliance's sheet wants.
• A drawer front shorter than its box needs — the shortest box plus its clearance.
• A shelf longer than fifty thicknesses.
• A door that would hit a wall, a drawer that would hit a neighbour.
• A pull-out whose runner is not made in the box's depth.
• Fillers and end panels on the same side.

Read on: the cabinet designer, drilling cards and shop documents.