#Installing Cabinetry - Issue No. 246

The cabinets themselves aren't the problem. They're just large wood boxes with a lot of straight lines, square corners, and straight forward joinery in the face frames and doors.

Remodeling a kitchen means more than new cabinets, though. Doing the job right means thinking about electrical and plumbing connections -- especially any changes to make during the renovation -- plus other decisions about countertops, flooring, and the like. As the scope of the project becomes clearer, a home-shop woodworker might wonder whether building his or her own cabinets makes much sense.

Even if you have the tools you need and feel confident your skills are up to the task, you'll be adding another layer to an already complicated project. Besides, it takes a lot of shop space to assemble an entire set of cabinets, and you can have the kitchen torn up for weeks if you do the installation piecemeal. A compromise might be the best solution -- think about buying manufactured cabinets and doing the installation yourself.

Ready-made cabinets will of course cost more than the raw materials, but the money you save doing the installation can help offset that expense, and you'll likely get the project organized, underway, and finished a lot sooner.

Focus on Planning

When the Workbench staff started planning a series of articles on a kitchen remodel, we knew using manufactured cabinets would be a choice many readers could make.

Bob Settich, our contributing editor, had just the site for us, and he'd been planning a renovation for over a year. While he began the demolition of his old kitchen and did some electrical work, we discussed the material options for the new flooring and countertops.

Since Bob and his wife were going to live with the kitchen, they got the deciding vote on these matters. For the cabinets, they chose a Merillat design ( Spring Valley ) in a natural maple finish. These were ordered from a local distributor and arrived about two weeks later.

Establishing Layout

Measuring and marking the kitchen accurately is the critical first task. You'll have some irregularities to deal with, so knowing the terrain is essential. Layout marks on the walls and floor will indicate not only the cabinet placement and stud locations, but where adjustments or shims will be required.

The primary guides are the base and upper cabinet level lines, but you need to work up to them. First, mark lines on the floor 22 from the walls where the toe kicks of the base cabinets go (Figure 1). Within that zone, use a level and a straightedge to locate the highest spot on the floor (Figure 2). Then transfer that height mark from the floor to the walls (Figure 3). When the base cabinets are installed, their bottom edges will have to be shimmed so they all line up level to this mark. It's much easier, though, to use the top edges of the cabinets for your reference. First, measure up 34-1/2 from the mark you just placed at the bottom of the wall. Then use the level and straightedge to mark a line around the walls at that height (Figure 4). This becomes your base cabinet level line, the reference for the top edges of all the base cabinets. With the countertops installed (adding 1-1/2 ), your work surface height will be at the 36 standard. While you're at it, mark another level line 19-1/2 above the first one. This will be the reference line for the upper cabinets.