wrote:
On Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:22:15 -0500, Swingman wrote:

FWIW, just finished a couple of 'down n' dirty' tambour door
"appliance garages" last week that I had promised to a recent kitchen
client, and needed to assuage my guilty conscious before any more time
passed:

http://www.e-woodshop.net/images/IMG...90929-1407.jpg

How much of that tambour door construction do you build? Do you buy
the tambours pre made and just install them?

Built the "appliance garage" (generally do that as an integral part of a
corner wall cabinet, but there was no room for a corner wall cabinet in
this kitchen due to a window, and wall cab's being 15" deep, therefore
these were built separately).

Bought the "tambour door" itself. Although it is not difficult to make,
by the time you factor time and having to buy more canvas then you'll
ever need, it is much more cost effective to buy the tambours pre-made.
They are generally available in 16, 24, and 36" widths, and for kitchens
usually 18" high, and can be cut on the table saw in both width and
height to fit the job.

As far as a track mechanism you have a couple of choices - you can route
tracks in the side panels (done just using a rectangular board as a
guide, which is a fussy process to setup, and you have to do it twice)
or you can buy the mechanism you see in the third link ... which
apparently only Rockler sells.

Any chance you have a picture of the inside track of one of those
tambours installations or something similar? thanks

Simply a spring loaded dowel and a couple of plastic tracks. What you
see in the third link in the original post, is all there is to it.

Notable is that this particular mechanism works very smoothly and opens
with less effort that when the tambour door is in routed tracks, IME.

AAMOF, there is really nothing to a "appliance garage" except a three
sided face frame for the front and a couple of side panels, therefore
they are very light and just the upward pressure of opening the door
will generally lift one off the surface if it not tightly fit under the
wall cabinet when made after the fact.

These particular spring loaded mechanism do not do that, and can be
opened with one finger due to the spring, and are actually very easy to
install providing you pay no attention whatsoever to the instructions
that come with them.

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Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)