Any sites you can recommend? Or books?

"Making Kitchen Cabinets" a foolproof system..
Taunton Press 1998 By Paul Levine

I haven't seen that one... My favorite is "Building Kitchen Cabinets" by
Udo Schmidt, Taunton Press 2003.

On our last house, I got bids from 13.5K to 15K for the cabinets.. 27
cabinets and 32 drawers. I said WTH, bought the book and built the whole
works with raised panel oak doors and European 35mm Blum hinges for
under 4 grand

I built our own cabinets last year, using 3/4" birch plywood for the cases
and #2 pine for the face frames. We were going for a "rustic" appearance
without looking cheap. The cabinets turned out great! Much nicer than we
were expecting.

I bought 1x6 and larger boards and ripped them into 2" strips. With careful
selection, I ended up with mostly clear lumber for the doors and face
frames, though I did try to leave a few tight knots to enhance the rustic
appearance.

The cases themselves were fairly easy. Basically just a box. I used 3/4"
birch plywood for the case, except for exposed sides where I glued up pine
panels. For exposed sides on upper cabinets I simply used 1x12's cut to
size. I assembled the face frames using pocket screws (Kreg Jig) which
makes the frames very strong and easy to assemble.

The drawers were made of birch plywood. 3/4" ply for the front and back,
1/2" ply for the sides, and 1/4" ply for the bottoms. I found the 3/4"
front/backs stronger and easier to nail into than the 1/2 samples I tried.
The applied drawer fronts were cut from 1x8 pine boards with a simple
roundover on the edges with a router. The lower drawer fronts had to be 13"
high so I just used pocket screws to edge join a couple of 1x8's and then
cut the front to size. I used 3/4 extension 22" blum slides I ordered from
Rockler.

The doors were definitely the most labor intensive to build, despite being
a simple shaker style. I built the frame with the same 2" strips I made the
face frames with. I made the center panels from 1x6 T&G pine we had left
over from another project. I ripped the tongues and grooves off, glued and
clamped them into panels, then run them through the planer and cut to size.
Then the door was assembled and spent time in the clamps as well. Very time
consuming. We used simple wood knobs on the doors and drawers to coordinate
with the rustic cabin look.

For the finish I applied MinWax wood preconditioner, then Minwax "Windsor
Oak" gel stain, then two coats of oil based satin polyurethane. The
finished result is very warm and attractive. We love it.

If I had to do it again, the only thing I would do differently is stain the
door panels before assembling the doors. After we moved into the house and
fired up the woodstove a few times, the door panels shrunk a little and
left unstained edges around some of the door panels. It's not bad and most
people probably wouldn't even notice, but as the builder it bugs me...

We were building the whole house which we contracted out the heavy stuff
but did all the inside work other than hanging the sheetrock, ourselves.

We built our own house too, except we did all of the work ourselves. Formed
and poured the foundation, framed the structure, plumbing, electrical,
insulation, sheetrock, cabinets, tiling, finish work, etc. Took almost 2
years of full time work, but a very satisfying accomplishment.

In addition to the kitchen cabinets, I also built cabinets for the
bathrooms, a built-in dresser and closet system for our master closet,
amoires and a window seat (w/drawers) for my daughters bedroom, and a
variety of shelves and whatnot. All made with the same birch and pine frame
construction.

Anthony