I used to sketch every cabinet layout on graph paper, now I mock it up in cardboard first | Build And Design

Lily Sullivan · 2026-10-08T04:05:04.190953+00:00

I build custom cabinets in my garage shop here in Boise, and for 6 years I did all my planning on graph paper with a mechanical pencil. Every drawer, every door, every filler strip, all drawn to scale at a quarter inch per foot. The problem was I could never really feel the space until wood was already cut. Last month I started cutting cardboard templates for the sink base and the 12 inch pullout spice rack, just taping them up on the wall where they will go. My wife walked in and said it looked like a recycling bin exploded, but I caught two mistakes in ten minutes that would have cost me a full sheet of birch ply at $85 a pop. The first one was a drawer front that would have hit the dishwasher handle, and the second was a top rail that was an inch too low for the faucet. Cardboard is free, plywood is not, and that math finally clicked for me. Now I keep a stack of flattened Amazon boxes behind the bench just for this. Has anyone else switched to full size mockups for shop builds, or do you stick with drawings until the first cut?

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I used to sketch every cabinet layout on graph paper, now I mock it up in cardboard first | Build And Design - The Design Community Hub