© Against The Grain Carpentry - contact: Tony (802)279-0938 - email: tony@againstthegraincarpentry.com
Inset
Overlay
Full Overlay
With inset cabinetry the drawers and doors sit inside their openings in the face frames. The front of the drawers and doors are generally flush with the fronts of the face frames. Inset cabinetry calls for very close tolerances in its production.
Overlay cabinetry has the drawers and doors mounted on top of the face frames and they overlay their openings by a small amount. We leave about 1” of exposed face frames around the doors and drawer faces for overlay construction.
Full overlay is the most common type of cabinetry we see from large manufacturers. The drawers and doors are on top of the face frames and they overlay their openings enough to only leave 1/4” space between the doors and drawers.
Full overlay is mostly used on cabinets that don’t have face frames. The front edges of the sides, bottoms and tops of the cabinet bodies are the face of the cabinets. We consider the latter a low quality production technique and though we have built them for customers in the past we always recommend that our customer choose to have face frames on their full overlay cabinets.
Inset, Overlay and Full Overlay. Here are the differences.
Overlays
Against The Grain Carpentry
Phone: (802) 279-0938
Email: tony@againstthegraincarpentry.com