That moment I realized most cabinet guys ignore the grain direction on face frames

I was working on a kitchen in Madison last week and the homeowner pointed out how the grain on two stiles ran opposite ways. Tbh I never paid much attention to it before, but once she showed me in the afternoon light it looked totally off. Now I lay out each piece from the same board and match the grain flow left to right. Has anyone else run into this with picky clients?

2 comments

2 Comments

ellis.robert18d ago

Call em out for wasting time on stuff nobody else will see.

piperr5819d ago

That's exactly the kind of thing that stares you in the face once you notice it. After a client pointed out mismatched grain on a pantry cabinet I did last year, I started laying out all my face frame pieces on the bench before assembly and labeling them with a pencil mark for left and right. It takes an extra ten minutes but saves that awkward conversation where you're trying to explain why two pieces from different batches don't line up. Even worse is when you have a crown molding run where the grain wraps around a corner and one piece is flat sawn and the other is rift sawn. The light catches them totally different and it looks like two separate projects.