With the exception of the cabinet that will go above the refrigerator, all of the upper kitchen cabinets are "up". This was one of those weekends where we really felt good about the progress that was made.
The kitchen has been bare since we removed the old cabinets back in March and April. We even relocated the refrigerator to the living room so it would be easier to patch and paint the kitchen walls. This weekend things would change.
Armed only with information I have gleaned from watching 40 years of This Old House and an online article from Family Handyman, I proceeded to begin the installation of our recently assembled RTA cabinets. I first located the high spot of the floor, measured up 34-1/2 inches (the height of the base cabinets), and drew a horizontal line with my level. Easy - until I checked my work by measuring at another point along the line and finding I dipped down by almost a quarter-inch. Grrr - I never saw Tom Silva have to erase a "level" line, but they probably edit that out.
I then measured up 19-1/2 inches (1.5 inches for a countertop still to be picked out, and 18 inches for the space above that), and then struck another horizontal line to guide placement of the upper cabinets. I used a stud finder that did not work very well and my knuckle to locate studs. I borrowed a 'pro' tip from a YouTube video and used a finish nail to confirm studs were actually there (the small holes will be covered by the cabinets for a future rehabber to find and patch). I struck vertical lines for the studs and laid out the cabinet edges of the uppers.
We are installing 42-inch upper cabinets, which go almost to the ceiling. We like the look of them, they eliminate the need for constructing a soffit to fill the space above shorter cabinets, and eliminate the temptation for stacking stuff on top to gather dust. I measured to confirm I had at least 42-1/4" above my line all the way around the room so I did not have an area where the uppers would not fit and make me curse, and we were off to the races.
I drilled pilot holes through the first upper cabinet, a corner cabinet, measuring from the stud marks on the walls. I screwed a short section of 2x4 to the wall just below the level line to support the first cabinet. Maggie helped me lift the cabinet onto the ledger board, and I placed cabinet jacks underneath for additional temporary support. I used the finish nail to tap through each pilot hole in the cabinet to double-check I was hitting studs and not just drywall and insulation. Using 2-1/2 and 3-3/8 inch cabinet screws the first cabinet was up - until I remembered to check for level. I loosened screws, shimmed to level, and tightened things up. Ha! - we had a cabinet! I immediately used it to hold tools for installing the other cabinets so I did not have to constantly pick them up from the floor.
Lather/rinse/repeat. We followed this process across the room, one cabinet at a time. Some lessons I can pass along:
1) All of the articles and YouTube channels are right - Layout is important. Take your time. As with painting, it is all in the preparation. It is OK to mark on the walls. Just use a pencil and not a Sharpie. Most of the marks will be covered by cabinets, and the rest can be scrubbed off (did I mention to not use a Sharpie?).
2) Measure twice before drilling that pilot hole through your cabinet, and do not drill through the face frame when attaching your cabinets together. Fortunately, all of my pilot holes were true. Just a reminder that this is the finish stage. People will see this work, so do it as best as you can.
3) Make your ledger board as long as the entire row of cabinets. I cut a short board for the first cabinet, which was a single cabinet. When I got to the bank of cabinets on the opposite wall I should have cut a longer ledger board as that would have saved me time in moving my short ledger board along and worrying that the subsequent cabinets were too high or low.
4) Invest in tools. If you just spent $4,000 on cabinets, spend an additional 160 bucks for cabinet jacks. You may need it for just one day, but if there is one thing I have learned, trying to make do with the wrong tool sucks. You can always sell tools on Craigslist and recover some money.
We ran into only one small snag. Maggie had bought 12-inch cabinets to install above the pass-through in the kitchen wall. Oddly, there was not a single vertical stud above the pass-through - the drywall was attached to nothing but horizontal plates above the pass-through and at the ceiling. I guess we can infer this is not a load-bearing wall! We plan to re-purpose these in the laundry area rather than reframe the wall.
Easy-beazy - next week we move on to the base cabinets.
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