Galaxy Frost Single Door Base Cabinets

Look at the SKUs on this page: GF B12, GF B15, GF B18, GF B21. Width, and nothing else. There is no -L or -R in the part number, which means the direction the door opens is not a different cabinet — it is a note on your order and an adjustment at install. That is good news and a trap at the same time, because a number that does not appear on the invoice is a number nobody checks.

Decide it on the plan. The working rule is that a door should open away from the person using the counter and away from the nearest appliance. At the end of a run against a wall, hinge on the wall side so the door swings out into the room rather than pinning itself. Beside a range, hinge away from the burners. Beside a refrigerator, hinge away from the fridge door, or the two will fight every morning.

The detail that catches people out is the overlay. These are full-overlay doors, so the door covers the frame and its hinge edge needs somewhere to go when it swings past 90 degrees. Push a cabinet tight into an inside corner or hard against a side wall and the door binds on the wall before it clears the opening. A 3″ filler at that junction fixes it, and it has to be ordered with the cabinets — our fillers and scribe guide covers where each one goes.

Two versions of most widths sit on this page: the plain B, which gives you a shallow drawer over a door, and the FD, which deletes that drawer and runs the door the full height. Prices below are per box, assembled.

Prices are what the grid above showed when this was last reviewed, net of our discount off Fabuwood list; the grid is the one to trust. Notice the pattern down the last two columns: dropping the top drawer saves about $33 to $36 whatever the width, which is the least interesting reason to do it. The full height versions are worth reading about on their own page — the reason to buy one is what fits inside, not what it costs.

Below 24″ there is no choice; one door is all that is offered. Above it there is, and people get it backwards surprisingly often — they split a wide opening into two narrow cabinets thinking it is tidier, and pay more for less storage.

Do the arithmetic on 36 inches of wall. Two GF B18 boxes cost $819.00 together. One GF B36 costs $676.00. The pair is $143 more expensive and puts a face frame down the middle of what could have been one interior, so a roasting pan and a stand mixer that sit side by side in the wide box will not sit side by side in the two narrow ones. In full-height door versions the gap is wider still: two GF B18FD boxes come to $747.50 against $490.75 for a single GF B36FD.

So split a run into single-door boxes for a reason, not by default. The good reasons: something goes between them (a dishwasher, a range, a trash unit), the layout needs a break at a corner, or you want one unobstructed opening. That last one is the argument nobody makes. A single door swings clear of the whole cabinet, so a beam- or floor-mounted pull-out uses the full width. In a two-door box the frame in the middle is still there whether the doors are open or not, and it decides what the widest thing you can slide in is.

• Waste and recycling — a 15″ or 18″ one-door box takes a single pull-out cleanly. Double units want a wider two-door cabinet and a different frame
• Tray and sheet-pan storage — the 9″ GF B09FD with vertical dividers, ideally next to the range or the oven
• Closing out a run — the 9″ and 12″ widths exist so the last box plus a small filler lands on your wall length
• Beside a dishwasher — one door means one swing to plan around instead of two

If the run is wider than 21″ and none of those apply, go and look at the two-door boxes before you commit.

Cabinets step in 3″ and walls do not, so every run has a leftover. Say the wall measures 106″ and the plan puts a 36″ sink base, a 30″ drawer base and a 24″ base against it: that is 90″, leaving 16″. A 15″ box plus a 1″ filler is too tight to look right. A 12″ box plus two 2″ fillers, one at each end, reads as intentional. A 9″ box with a 7″ filler reads as a mistake.

The rule we use: keep any single filler at 3″ or under, and split the remainder between both ends of the run rather than dumping it all in one place. That is what the narrow widths are for. It is also why you order fillers with the cabinets — they come in the same paint, and a filler cut from a scrap panel on site never matches.

One more number people skip. Walls are not parallel and corners are not square. Measure the wall at 36″ off the floor — counter height, where the cabinets actually live — at both ends and in the middle, and build the run to the smallest of the three. Our kitchen dimensions checklist lists the rest of what to take before anything is ordered.

Four pages on this site sell boxes with doors and no sink in them, and the difference between them is only two variables: how many doors, and whether there is a drawer on top.

If you have landed here looking for drawers rather than doors, the three-drawer bases are the better answer for pots and utensils, and the sink bases and corner bases handle the two spots where neither of those works. Everything in this paint is on the collection page.