As a carpentry novice in construction school, I was hesitant to chime in—at first.

Then we had to calculate how much plywood to buy to build new cabinets for the school’s dental technology lab. Using a formula for calculating board feet of lumber (width inches X length feet X depth inches / 12), we quickly arrived at an amount. 

You don’t have to be a carpenter to know it’s not that simple. Anyone who has ever reupholstered furniture knows you have to take pattern into consideration. Otherwise, you’ll be sitting on monkeys and palm trees going every which way. Nobody wants that.

The same applies to cabinet doors. The grain needs to flow one direction, which means you can’t just use all the scraps, like so much pie crust. You could have plenty of board feet but still not enough for a cabinet door. Lumber, lumber everywhere, nor enough to plank…or something like that. 

So we mapped out our panels before making our cuts and likely saved ourselves another trip to Home Depot.

Knowing that I actually do have some relevant experience, even if it’s on the softer side of things, I’m chiming in a lot more—for better and for worse.