Galaxy Horizon Light Rail Molding Cabinets

The live list carries a single part: GH LRM at $149.50. It does not publish a stick length or the drop of the profile below the cabinet, so ask us for both before you finalise a fixture or a quantity. Every end treatment below uses the same part; what changes is how it is cut and where it is fixed.

Count ends before you count feet. A single straight run has two. An L with a window break on one leg has five or six. A U with a hood and a pantry can easily have eight. Each end either returns (turns ninety degrees and runs back along the cabinet side) or stops (is cut square and finished where it is), and returns eat material in short pieces that need to come from full lengths.

On a stain, count something else too. Every place the rail is cut and left visible exposes end grain, the open cells at the cut face. End grain soaks up finish and tends to look darker and rougher than the face of the stick. The stick is finished at the factory, and the cut end is not. Most ends below are designed so the cut face either disappears into a joint or turns towards a surface nobody sees.

This is the most common end and the most visible one: a run of uppers that stops short of a wall or doorway, with its side open to the room. From across the kitchen you see the side of the last cabinet, and the rail’s end is in the corner where that side meets the underside.

The right finish is a mitred return. Cut the rail at forty-five degrees where it reaches the corner, cut a short piece at the opposite angle, and run it back along the underside of the cabinet side, stopping flush with the back of the cabinet or just short of the wall. The profile then wraps the corner, no end grain faces the room, and the light fixture is hidden from the side as well as from the front, which matters if anyone sits at an island to the side of the run.

Cut the return piece from the same stick, straight after the mitre, so the figure wraps the corner in one sweep. The piece is short, often under a foot, and the temptation is to cut it from an offcut. Resist it on a stain: an offcut from another stick can be a slightly different tone, and the return is exactly where the two pieces sit at right angles in full view.

The one thing still exposed is the back end of the return, where it stops. If it stops against the wall it is hidden. If it stops in air, because the cabinet is shallower than something beside it, sand the cut face lightly and use the fill stick or marker from the touch-up kit on it.

Where a run of uppers meets a pantry, an oven tower or a panelled fridge, the rail meets a vertical surface that projects well beyond it. Here the rail stops square, butted to the side of the tall unit, and the cut end is hidden against it. No return is needed and none should be fitted; a return against a tall cabinet looks like a piece that has lost its way.

Two cautions. The tall side is rarely perfectly plumb, so the square cut will usually need a hair taken off to close tight at the front. And the cut should close against the finished face of the tall unit, not against a gap: if a filler or a panel is going beside the tall cabinet, fit that first. The filler page and the tall cabinets are where those sit, and a gap here is the one place a stained rail really needs a scribe rather than caulk.

A wall hood breaks the run of uppers, and the rail stops on each side of it. Whether it stops square or returns depends on the hood. Where the uppers either side come forward to the same face as the hood surround, the rail stops square against the hood side and the cut is hidden.

Where the hood surround is deeper than the uppers, the side of the upper is exposed next to it for an inch or two, and a short return along that exposed side looks finished. Where the hood is shallower than the uppers, the upper’s side is open to the room like an open-air end, and it takes a full mitred return.

Heat is the other reason to think about this end. A light rail right against a hood side is close to the cooking zone and will see steam and grease. The finish copes with ordinary cooking, but it is the rail’s most-cleaned stretch. Wipe it with a damp cloth and a mild cleaner, blot rather than rub when it is wet, and never spray cleaner directly at the wood, which is Fabuwood’s own care instruction. The hood list shows the depths to compare against your uppers.

A window over the sink splits the upper run into two, and the rail has four ends there rather than two: each upper beside the window has an exposed side, and each side is open to the room. Treat both like open-air ends, with mitred returns running back along the cabinet sides.

If a valance spans the gap, the picture changes. The valance fixes between the two cabinets and closes the top of the window opening, and the rail’s returns now run into the valance’s ends rather than into air. Check with us whether the valance face sits flush with the cabinet faces or behind them; that decides whether the rail returns or stops square against it. The valance page covers the parts.

The window wall is also the one that gets the most daylight, and a stain can read warmer in sun and cooler on an overcast day. The rail sits in the underside shadow, so it will usually read a touch darker than the doors above it. That is normal and it is part of why the rail disappears.

Where a run of uppers ends tight against a side wall, the rail runs into the wall and stops. The cut end is against plaster or drywall and is hidden, but the wall is almost never straight, so the rail will meet it with a gap at one edge.

On paint the gap would be caulked and painted. On a stain the tidy answer is to scribe the end of the rail to the wall, taking a little off the back edge with a block plane until it closes, and then caulk any hairline with a paintable caulk coloured to the wall, so the joint belongs to the wall rather than to the rail.

• Open air: mitred return from the same stick; touch up the return’s back end if it shows.
• Tall cabinet or fridge panel: square stop, butted tight; no return.
• Hood: square stop if the faces align; short return if the hood is deeper; full return if it is shallower.
• Window break: two open-air ends, or stops against the valance if one is fitted.
• Wall: square stop scribed to the wall; wall-coloured caulk only in a hairline.

Each return takes a short length cut from a full stick. The practical rule is to add one stick for every three returns to whatever the straight runs need, then order the lot at once with the cabinets. Fabuwood’s spec book is clear that stained finishes vary in colour from part to part, and a later stick sitting next to an earlier one along a single rail is exactly where that shows.

Fit the rail last. The under-cabinet lighting should be wired and working, the backsplash tiled up to the underside of the cabinet, and the fixture depth checked against the rail’s drop. A rail fixed before any of that has to come off again, and every removal risks splitting a short return that took a full stick to make.

The ends deserve drawing, not guessing. The free 3D design shows every upper run with its ends marked, so the returns can be counted from the plan. Pricing is on the light rail molding page, alongside the wall cabinets it fixes to.