How to order custom fronts from a cut-to-size shop

Custom fronts are ordered from a cut-to-size shop, not from a bespoke joiner — and you order three services at once: cutting to the millimetre, edge banding on the visible edges, and blind Ø35 mm hinge-cup boring. With a finished technical drawing in hand that conversation takes a few minutes: the shop gets a PDF to quote from and a DXF file to run on the machine, and you never have to calculate or explain anything. The whole craft of it is finding a shop that does all three, and not leaving any of the three out of the order.

Who you are looking for

You want a shop that cuts furniture board to size: it cuts panels from a sheet, applies edge banding, and drills holes. Search maps or the web for "cut to size", "panel cutting service" or "MDF cut to size" plus your town. Most cities have several, and many shops take orders by email and ship.

This is not the same as a carpenter. A carpenter designs and builds furniture — and if you commissioned fronts from one, they would order the cut panels from exactly this kind of shop anyway, and you would pay their margin for the middle step. Going direct, you buy the machine work alone. (A carpenter will of course make the front from the same drawing if you prefer — usually for more.)

It is worth saying plainly, because the whole method rests on it: the shop is an executor, not a designer. It does not know the METOD system, how many millimetres to take off a cabinet size, or where the hinge cups land — and it does not need to. It does exactly what is on the drawing. The value sits in the specification, not in the machine; machines are everywhere and they are cheap.

What you order — the list

Name these items together, ideally in this order, in an email with the PDF attached:

Cutting to size, in millimetres. Take the dimensions from the drawing — not from an IKEA list and not from a tape run over an old front. The drawing gives the finished front size, and the shop knows what to do with that.
Edge banding on the edges that will be seen. On kitchen fronts that is usually all four. Agree the band thickness, because it decides how much smaller the blank is cut: the size on the drawing is the size after banding.
Blind Ø35 mm hinge-cup boring. This is the line to confirm separately — not every shop offers it. For UTRUSTA hinges there are also two small dowel holes beside each cup, and drawer fronts get small blind mounting holes for the drawer box. All of them are dimensioned on the drawing.
Board and decor. You pick from what the shop stocks — the drawing does not dictate a material. On a decor with visible grain, say which way the grain should run.

The PDF is enough for a quote. If the shop has a CNC, send the DXF files too — one per front, with the outline and the hole layers ready to cut. That shortens the conversation to almost nothing and removes any hand-copying of numbers.

Questions to ask

Before you ask for a quote, ask four questions. The answers decide whether it is worth sending the files at all.

"Do you bore blind Ø35 mm hinge cups?" — question number one. Everyone cuts and bands; not everyone bores cups, and the cups are what decide whether the front comes back ready to hang. Ask specifically for blind ones: a hole that goes through is a wasted panel.

"Which boards do you work with, and which decors do you stock?" — the range varies enormously: one shop carries two racks of laminate, another also does MDF ready for lacquering. You will also learn whether your colour is in stock or has to be ordered in.

"Can you work from a PDF drawing, and will you take a DXF on the machine?" — the answer is almost always yes, but it is worth hearing before you send the set. While you are at it, ask whether they want the dimensions transcribed onto their own order form or whether the attachment is enough.

"What is the lead time?" — ask this before you settle on a material, because an unusual decor can stretch the schedule more than the work itself does. A local shop with the board in stock can often turn it round in days rather than weeks, and that is one of this route's real advantages over ordering ready-made fronts.

If you can, ask two or three shops. The spread between quotes is often wider than you would expect, and you send every one of them the same drawing.

What not to do

Do not ask the shop to design the front. "I need fronts for an IKEA kitchen" is not an order, it is a problem handed to someone who will not solve it. The shop does not know METOD dimensions or hinge positions; if it tries to reconstruct them, it will do so by eye, and the consequences stay with you. Bring the drawing — that is what it is for.

Do not hand over centimetres. "60 by 80" at a cutting counter sounds like the size of the panel, and it is sometimes taken that way. A finished METOD front is 3 mm smaller than its nominal size, so the gap between nominal and real is exactly the situation where a rounded number costs you a whole panel.

Do not skip edge banding without saying so. If you deliberately leave an edge unbanded, tell the shop — the drawing's size assumes banding, so the allowance on that edge has to be worked out differently. Beyond that, an unbanded edge on laminated board is exposed core: it shows immediately in a kitchen and does not cope well with damp.

Do not have handle holes drilled by eye. They are not on our drawings, because hole spacing differs across thousands of handle models. They get drilled once you have picked a specific handle, to that handle's own template — by you or by the same shop.

Do not change the hinge count after cutting. Settle it before the board goes on the machine. Adding a cup to a finished, banded front is hand work, without a drawing and without a depth stop.

What it costs

Published cut-to-size rates run 700–1,000 zł per m² (≈ €160–230/m²) of finished front for lacquered MDF, as of July 2026; laminate runs roughly half that. It is a published price for the finished lacquered front; whether hinge-cup boring is included varies from shop to shop, so have it quoted as its own line. Prices vary across the EU, so treat this as the order of magnitude rather than a quote.

For a ten-front example kitchen (six 60 × 80 cm doors and four 60 × 40 cm drawer fronts, 3.84 m² in total) that works out at roughly €680–930 including our drawings. For comparison, branded made-to-measure fronts start at about €2,000 for the same kitchen, and Polish makers who ship start around €580 — within their own material catalogue, and with a seven-week lead time quoted when we checked.

The drawings themselves are €49 — a one-off for the whole project, however many fronts it contains. Hinges are bought separately, wherever suits you.

Your own quote will differ from all of this. One line item surprises people: a shop may charge for a whole sheet of board rather than only the square metres that come off it. That is how the invoice for the fronts fronteli grew out of read — four fronts, and a full sheet on the bill. Across a whole kitchen that offcut is spread over more pieces, so one large order beats four small ones. Ask in a few places, and compare totals for the set rather than headline rates per square metre.

Sizes, hinge side and a preview of every front are in the configurator. If you have not settled on a material yet, start with the materials guide — that choice moves the final number more than anything else. To check a finished front size before you ask anyone for a quote, the size table lists every size we support in millimetres; the rest of the guides cover dimensions, hinges and how to keep the kitchen from looking like a catalogue.