Video Transcript
[Music] Hey everybody! Behind me, here is a vanity combination six-drawer cabinet—pretty popular for vanities and even other rooms. I want to talk a little bit about this cabinet. You clicked on this video because you’re looking for an assembly tutorial. However, rather than cluttering our library with repetitive videos, I’m going to refer you to the Vanity Combination Cabinet (VCL) video that we have. This cabinet is basically identical, except it has an extra bank of drawers. The assembly process doesn’t change, except for some of the nuances I’ll walk you through in a moment. So, stick with the video so you can see those nuances. But I won’t bother showing how to glue it up and slide the spreader strips in—all of that is covered in the VCL video.
Alright, let’s talk about this VC6D. Here are a couple of things to know:
It’s available in widths from 48 to 72.
Standard heights range from 31 1/2 to 34 1/2.
As you go inside that height range, you can design in 16th-inch height increments.
Now, if the height changes—for example, you went up from 31 1/2 to 34 1/2—these openings are always 5 and 8 inches.
What changes is the bottom opening. This particular cabinet has a custom frame. For the astute viewer looking at this, you might notice that the opening is not exactly 8 inches. That’s because a customer requested this custom frame. Normally, it’s 5, 5, 8, and 11 1/2 inches for a 34 1/2-inch-high cabinet.
As you vary within that height range, the bottom opening is the one that gets bigger or smaller, depending on your desired height.
Now, let’s talk about depths:
You can go from 12 inches all the way up to 30 inches in 3-inch increments.
These increments are because of the drawer glides that come from Bloom, a German manufacturer that makes our glide hardware. Unfortunately, the glides are only available in 3-inch increments, so we can’t do an odd increment like 14 inches because the glides won’t match up to the drawer box. So, we stick to those 3-inch increments from 12 to 30 inches.
Now, I want to talk a little bit about some of the nuances of the assembly. There’s not a lot to it, but these structural panels or non-structural dividers inside can get you in trouble if you’re not aware. So, let’s jump into some of the nuances of this box.
Okay, again, to stress, this assembly is just like the video I referenced you to—drawer glide hardware, the bracket holes in the back—all of that is going to be self-explanatory. What makes it odd is this divider panel. This divider panel is not structural; it does not dovetail into the cabinet in any way, shape, or form. It’s just a floating half-inch-thick piece of plywood cut to size—front to back, top to bottom.
Now, why is this divider panel here? It’s an add-on. You don’t even have to put it in if you don’t want to. But a lot of people don’t want the sink area. When you open these doors, they don’t want to see the sides of their drawers. They don’t want their curling iron to fall off and land inside the sink area. They kind of want it to look partitioned off. So, I get that. In that case, if you want to put them in, we’ll show you how to do that.
But what I want to mention is that they float behind the front frame. You can really locate them anywhere behind this front frame that makes sense for your application. In this case, we were doing full overlay. So, in full overlay, the drawer glide rests on the front frame, and we didn’t put a rear bracket in there because it would have kind of collided. If your assembly has the holes for it, you can put a rear bracket in if you want. We chose not to and moved it over, actually mounting the drawer glide straight to the cabinet side panel.
Okay, that’s just a fielder’s choice. Remember, I mentioned that this cabinet was custom this way. The customer also asked for a custom width here on the VC6D.
The drawer openings are always 12 inches, and as the cabinet gets bigger or smaller, these are the openings that flex. This customer wanted an 11-inch opening instead of the 12, so our holes for those brackets wouldn’t have mounted correctly. They wouldn’t have been measured over to the right area; it would have put the bracket too far inboard. So, we just put the panel right up tight to the front frame and ran the door glide right down it.
Okay, you could have mounted it in the middle if you wanted to. The hinges on full overlay hinges wrap around the front frame, so you wouldn’t want to take this panel and make it flush with this opening because you wouldn’t be able to get your hinge around it. The same applies to inset. I’ve got an inset hinge here—the inset hinge sits in the back of the front frame like that. So, you wouldn’t want this panel all the way over to here, but you could put it in the middle or flush it out—either one of those is fine.
When you go to secure the panel, there’s nothing up top to secure it to. But you can come in all along the back cabinet back—you can run pins or screws. And you can come into the cabinet bottom with pins or screws to fasten it in place. Then you’re pretty much fixed. Again, it’s not structural; its only purpose is to block off those drawers.
Now, let’s say you had an inset application. This gets a little trickier. This is where you may not even want to use the panel because it gets that painful. This bracket mounts to the back of the front frame and carries over behind the front frame about a half an inch. Then you have the Tentex bracket on this side that carries over over a half an inch. So, if you were to center this panel, you will not get both this bracket and this TCH bracket behind that front frame with this panel.
So, you have one of two options: either do what we did here and move the panel over, just running the drawer glide straight on the side of the partition wall, **or** if you want to use both the **Tentex carrier bracket** (which is nice because you have in-out adjustability), you'll need to cut a C-shape in the partition panel. This allows the hinge to clear and the Tentex bracket to fit. Essentially, you'll need to cut out a big C from the plywood, which might look a little unconventional.
Now, if you're going for an inset application, things get a bit trickier. In this case, you might even reconsider using the panel because it can be quite challenging. Here's why: The bracket mounts to the back of the front frame and extends behind the front frame by about half an inch. Then you have the Tentex bracket on the other side, which also extends over half an inch. If you were to center this panel, you wouldn't be able to fit both the hinge bracket and the Tentex bracket behind that front frame with this panel.
So, be aware of that. I'd hate to see you get this panel centered, only to realize that it interferes with your hardware. Remember, the hardware is typically mounted on the front frame before you even assemble the box. So, think these things through before you put everything together. Consider where you want that panel to make the most sense for your application.
Now, let's talk about sink top spreader strips. The other nuance with these vanity cabinets (or pretty much any cabinet intended to accommodate a sink) is that, except for our apron sink-based cabinet, you won't be using the left-to-right spreader strips that go across. Instead, they use a C-shaped spreader strip that goes down vertically. When you're assembling, instead of having one big top or two spreader strips, you'll slide these in, and they dovetail into the side of the cabinet. You'll find this demonstrated in the VCL video we referred you to for assembly instructions on this box. Just be aware that the horizontal spreader strips that run the length of the cabinet won't be included because they would impede your ability to drop a sink into the sink area. You'd have to cut them out or remove them altogether. Instead, they provide these I-beam ones on the left and right sides. That's the only other nuance with these vanity or sink-style cabinets compared to a standard base.
And that sums up our coverage of the VC6D cabinet. Again, reference that VCL assembly—it should guide you through how the box goes together. This is just a bigger version of it with more drawers. And remember, those panels can get you in trouble if you're not careful. If you have any questions at all, feel free to call your cabinet coach—they'll walk you through it. Thanks for watching, everybody! Have a great day!
