Making sliding beadboard cabinet doors

We redid our bathroom this summer. Our contractor did 70% of it and we did the final touches to save on cost. When it came to the cabinet above our newly stacked washer/dryer I came up dry on tutorials for sliding doors. None matched my project exactly: beadboard panels with a shaker-style frame, so I figured I’d document it as I go.

The washer/dryer stands roughly my height, 5’10". Out of reach for my family without a stool, so this was of aesthetic importance to them, functionality to me.

Why sliding doors

My first thorugh was standard side-opening doors. A pre-made unfinished cabinet box with doors was $150 at Home Depot. I could just slide it in and hide any gaps and be done with it. Then I kept my ear to fb Marketplace for cabinet doors in the right size for a few weeks, but nothing materialized.

Sliding won for a few reasons:

• No swing clearance needed. In a tight bathroom with the cabinet facing the glass shower doors, two 20-inch doors would be awkward.
• Simpler hardware. I could do it all myself. No hinges or hardware, beyond handles.
• Looks intentional. Our 1930’s home has beadboard in many rooms (including the new vanity in the bathroom)

The technique (the basics)

The principle is simple and shows up in every tutorial I found:

1. The top groove is taller than the bottom groove. This lets you tilt the door up into the top channel, then drop it down into the bottom channel.
2. The bottom groove is shallower and narrower. This is the sliding surface. The less material contacting the floor of that groove, the easier the slide.
3. Wax the bottom channel. A block of paraffin makes a noticeable difference.

Some higher-end builds use thick doors with a routed bottom edge that reduces contact to a thin ridge. Mine won’t go that far, but the principle holds.

My specific situation

Every project is different, and mine had a few constraints worth spelling out.

The cabinet was already built. I couldn’t cut grooves directly into the floor or ceiling of the cabinet box while building — it was done. Routing the channels in place wasn’t something I was comfortable with either. So I’m building the channel system as applied strips, glued and nailed in place.

The top plywood didn’t reach the end. When my contractor built the cabinet box, the top piece of plywood fell about a foot short of the opening. That gap turned out to be a gift: I cut a separate piece of plywood to fill it, sized exactly to the opening, and I’ll cut the top channel directly into that piece before installing it. The bottom strip and this top piece can be aligned independently and perfectly.

Materials

• Doors: ¼" beadboard, framed with ⅛" hobby red oak for the shaker border
• Cabinet box: ¾" oak plywood, stained light red
• Channel strips (bottom): ⅜" pine, ripped into strips ~4" wide, then cut down to channel pieces
• Channel piece (top): cut directly from a fitted plywood fill piece

The beadboard/oak shaker combination came out of a conversation with Claude. The beadboard alone felt too rustic — barn-ish, garage-ish. Adding an oak border is meant to do what a mat does for a photograph: frame it, contain it, elevate it. Whether that works in practice I’ll find out when I get there.

Where I am now

Done:

• Bottom channel strip cut and glued in place
• Top channel strip cut, temporarily placed for measurement
• Both doors cut to size and test-fit — they slide
• Spacer math done: ¼" door thickness needs slightly oversized grooves (working out the exact spec as I go)

Screwup log:

• Tried to rip four thin shaker trim pieces on the chop saw. Rushed it, probably didn’t clamp close enough to the blade. All four blew out. The chop saw’s sliding mechanism made it worse — should have just plunged straight down. Two good door panels, zero usable trim pieces.
• Ordered a new length of ⅛" hobby red oak to replace them.

Still to do:

• Cut shaker frame pieces and glue/nail to door panels
• Finalize channel spacers and nail bottom strip permanently
• Install top fill piece with routed/cut top channel
• Install doors
• Wax
• Finish (stain? paint? TBD)

Notes for anyone following along

A few things I’d have done differently if starting from scratch:

• Build the channels into the cabinet as you go. If you’re building the box yourself, cut the grooves before assembly. Much easier than retrofitting strips.
• Use a table saw or circular saw with a fence for thin trim pieces, not a chop saw. Obvious in hindsight.
• Test-fit before finishing. I cut both doors and confirmed fit before touching trim. Saved me from a worse screwup.

Photos coming as I finish. This is still in progress.

may add later?

The project was full bathroom gut-and-redo. Contractor handled the big stuff — shower threshold, shower niche, framing conversion of '70s fiberglass shower to concrete, vanity install, plumbing. We took over the finish work to cut costs, which meant: tiling the shower walls, hanging the shower door, trim, painting, and this cabinet. He left a clean rough job. We left him without the satisfying finish he would have given it. That’s the deal we made and we appreciated the flexibility.