37 kitchen cabinet installation

In this video I want to give you some tips about

fitting and installing cabinets on the wall It's not actually that complicated

Especially when you understand a few tricks so the floor this would be the wall here ceiling

Now you always start with the lower cabinets Got the cabinet body here

And then the kick bass May or may not go right to the wall. Now your job first of all is to

Determine whether this cabinet is level both in this direction and then

From left to right as well. You want to correct that and it's easy to do

with some shims As-needed underneath the kick bass Now you might think

Are they gonna see that do I really want a gap on the floor if it's a crazy amount of leveling

That you need to do then you can cut away The kick bass at an angle to accommodate for that in many houses. The shimming required is very minimal and

Because you're kind of looking at this from up above Any gap there pretty much disappears, but you can certainly scribe that

Bottom the bottom edge of the kick bass in order to establish a level cabinet if you're dealing with some really wonky floors

now Before you go any further. Let me explain something that has to do with

the design of the cabinet That you saw before so imagine this is the side

Of an upper or lower cabinet and this is the wall here

That's the wall so The way the cabinets are built the back panel

Does not go all the way to the back edge Of the side styles of the cabinet

Now why would that be well a Pretty simple reason it has to do with allowing you to adjust the fit of the cabinet

against the walls so the gap here allows you to accommodate for any bumps in the walls or any out of squareness by

Scribing The side styles because that's what you want to meet the wall

You really don't care what happens in between but you do want a tight fit here and here on cabinets that are visible

From the end. That's the situation where this matters. So When you have your cabinet fitting tight against the wall and you're happy

You're going to want to put some spacers in to to fill that space

Before you go and drive screws now assume that there's a wall stud here

And you're going to want to drive a screw here Well in order for this to be a

Tight fit and a secure installation. You're going to have to get rid of any gap that's there

so the gap allows you to scribe and The scribe allows you to fit the wall

But the gap has to be filled before you drive your anchor screw through that

that back strip that's part of the Design of the cabinet now that could be a single anchoring strip or it could be a half inch thick

plywood back panel both options are offered in the plans, but that's what needs to happen here as

You're anchoring The lower cabinets now traditionally The lower cabinets are secured only through the top not the bottom

They're resting on the floor so they don't have to bear the same weight as an upper cabinet

And there's you get when there is a mounting strip. It's usually just at the top and that's sufficient now before you proceed with the upper cabinets

Get a piece of scrap plywood or something just put it on top just laying on top

It doesn't have to be fastened, but it gives you a work surface Keep your tools on and it also allows you

to use some props which pretty important part of installing the upper cabinets, so the prop would just be a

hunk of 1x2 a Little bit longer than necessary to occupy your desired space between the upper cabinet and the lower cabinet

Now why a little longer well the 1x2 Should be installed at a little angle

It's just a temporary prop here, but by having a little bit of extra length you can move the bottom end in or out

To adjust that cabinet So that is level From left to right so you want that leeway having the plywood or sheet goods here allows you to put those props

Anywhere you want anywhere you need to in order to do the leveling now the props alone are not going to be sufficient

To stop the cabinet from falling against the wall So you're you are going to need a helper to to push that cabinet hold it against the wall

While the weight of the cabinet is being supported by these props

And when you've got it all tweaked The way you want then you can install

some screws As needed to hold that in place That's the process in a nutshell what comes later is countertop installation

Putting back the doors that you fitted the drawer faces doing all those little things

but This in a nutshell is how you get the cabinets on the wall get them level and get them anchored securely

I'd like to leave you with one more thing to do with mounting cabinets if you've come this far in the project

You don't need to be spoon-fed through all the details These are the basics and that'll get you where you want to go

But when it comes to choosing screw length there may be something that that you don't realize is a couple of issues

first of all the Screw should be a fairly beefy one. This is a number 12

Don't use number six or eight. They're really too thin number ten would be a minimum and also

Use a cup washer Under the head like this this helps to distribute

the pressure of the screw over a larger area of the back panel that you're screwing into

It'll also help it to look nicer not that it matters a whole lot in the lower cabinets

But you will see these mounting screws in the upper cabinets when you take things out

So cup washers are definitely a great idea Now screw length in this situation over here

We've got something typical We've got wall studs, which maybe you're fastening your cabinet to those

In the course I recommend if at all possible To replace the drywall behind the area of your cabinets with some plywood

Minimum five-eighths of an inch thick and that allows you to drive screws anywhere

In which case you don't have to find the studs and you don't need terribly long screws

Because they're going to find something strong to fasten to right away, but whatever you do, you're going to want to have

In a stud situation screws penetrating those studs at least an inch or

An inch and a quarter if you're anchoring into studs, you don't want to go beyond this

Because there's a good chance that there could be wiring Going through those studs and you don't want to take the chance of hitting that those wires

One inch would be the minimum so something closer to one and a quarter is probably what you're aiming for

So you're going to have to do a little bit of investigating to find out what the optimal length of screw is

for your installation