Well, I’m finally moving on to the doors of this pantry.  I think I have conquered my dread of inset doors.

I found this excellent tutorial on YouTube, which is extremely helpful in making shaker-style doors.  You will need a router table, and tongue & groove router bits.

I use a Craftsman router table which came from Sears.

(Disclaimer: Routers, like most other wood working equipment, are DANGEROUS, so be sure you read up on all safety precautions.  YouTube has some great tutorials, if you are a beginner).

The one thing you have to remember is to mark all of your wood so the same side is facing up when you run them through the router table.  In other words, after I cut all of my pieces to length, I wrote “back” on all of them, and made sure that side was facing up when I ran it through the router table. This ensures that the pieces fit together perfectly.

I’m afraid I did not get too many photos of this process.  I got so focused on trying to think through everything, that I found it difficult to stop and pick up the camera.

Here are what the rails and stiles looked like after they had been routed:

 Once that was done, it was time to cut my panels to size and assemble the doors.  I used mdf for the panel inserts, and pine for the rails and stiles.

Oh, I almost forgot… I marked the center edge of the sides of the door, and then put a mark in the center of the middle rail so they would line up.  Like this:

The arrows were to show me which sides to router out.   I did not need to router both sides of the top and bottom rails, so I drew arrows on every piece. I’m telling ya, it’s easy to get confused.  That is why you always need to lay all of your cut pieces out in the order they are going to be assembled, and mark everything up before you start cutting.  You’ll be glad you did!

Tomorrow, I break out the paint sprayer.  I’m sure the neighbors will be pleased.