Reveal, scribe, stile, blind corner, high loop. The quote, the spec sheet and the installer all assume you know these — here they are, one line each.
Nothing in a kitchen is complicated once it has a name. Most of the confusion in a first renovation is vocabulary — a quote that says “3″ scribe filler, MBEP24, full overlay” is telling you something perfectly simple in a language nobody taught you.
That the door covers virtually the whole front of the box, leaving only a hairline — about ⅛″ — between neighbouring doors. It is the standard on frameless European cabinets and is what gives a modern kitchen its continuous face. Partial overlay leaves a wide border of frame showing; inset doors sit flush inside the frame.
The visible gap around and between doors and drawer fronts. On a full-overlay kitchen it is roughly ⅛″. Because every door is adjustable at the hinge, an even reveal all the way along a run is the clearest visual difference between a professional install and a rushed one.
To cut it to the exact shape of a wall that is not straight. You hold the filler in place, run a compass down the wall so its point follows every bump while the pencil marks a matching line, then trim to that line. It is how a rigid cabinet run finishes tight against a wavy wall.
On a framed door, stiles run vertically and rails run horizontally. A Shaker door is two stiles, two rails and a flat centre panel — five pieces. Cabinet boxes also have rails: the strips across the open top of a base cabinet, and the strips on the back you screw through into the studs.
A straight board temporarily screwed to the wall along your level line, so wall cabinets can rest on it while you drive the screws. You do not strictly need one, but it turns a two-person job into a one-person job and it guarantees every cabinet lands on the same line. Remove it after and fill the screw holes.
The dishwasher’s drain hose routed up as high as possible under the countertop before it drops down to the disposal or trap. Gravity then keeps dirty sink water from flowing back into the machine. It costs nothing, takes a minute, and is one of the first things an inspector looks for.
Thickness, and therefore behaviour. PET is a 0.45 mm laminated sheet used on high-gloss fronts — deep colour, moisture resistant, tolerant of household acids and alkalis. Melamine is a 0.02 mm resin-impregnated laminate that takes colour and embossed grain beautifully and hides fingerprints. Both are factory-applied, so neither fades and every door matches.
Everything named on this page exists in the free planner, with the right sizes already in it.
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