Let’s talk about kitchen cabinets!
At my 9-5 career I have been a project manager for some time now and one of the projects that I was placed over was managing our building remodel which was a nice change of pace. One of the new builds was a company kitchen and to save a bunch of money we decided to install and build our own Ikea kitchen cabinets. This wasn’t too big of a deal in my book because I have been doing similar things for years but boy was I wrong!
Ikea is good at making their projects modular which is great for them because they ship less and still have more products. The downside is for the person assembling their products which fell on myself and a couple other guys. Since there were so many options of assembly because of how modular Ikea is, their cabinets proved to be a very time consuming build for us and as many of you know if you have to reassemble a piece of Ikea furniture good luck keeping it together for the long haul! So as we were putting it together it was a little nerve wracking thinking that it needed to stay together for a while. I mean it’s not like a bookshelf that you just move and put a new one in if it breaks. We have been using the kitchen cabinets for almost a year now and everything is working great so they did work out.
So why do I tell you that story? Well because I needed to replace my grimy kitchen cabinets with new ones and I didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg to get new ones in. So what I did was started to research the cabinet world for ready to assemble (RTA) cabinets that wouldn’t break the bank. Now Ikea is basically a whole RTA company so anything that you get from them would fit in this category. I found a bunch of places that do RTA cabinets but the one I liked because of price and quality was the RTA Cabinet Store. They had a great price point and styles that I liked but one of the selling points for me was that they were cheaper than Ikea and their cabinets are full wood which is becoming harder to find.
After figuring out what I needed to fit my kitchen I made my order and waited. They shipped them to me on two pallets shrink wrapped and boxed ready to be assembled. I had them ship it to my work office so that I could be there when it was delivered. I then restacked all the boxes into my truck and took them home.
What I found was that assembling these kitchen cabinets was way easier, straightforward and faster than Ikea by a long shot. I was able to assemble all of my kitchen cabinets in a few hours rather than a few days.
I also was very pleased with the way they go together and the look that they have. To place them up on the wall is like any other cabinet. Use a laser level set it to the bottom of the cabinet upper and screw the cabinet into the wall into a stud (making sure it is level up and down as well). Then use a 4-foot level to make sure the rest line up properly.
Make sure to start with the upper corner cabinet, if you get this level and the correct height everything else will line up easier.
I used clamps to help hold the cabinets together with the help of another person and made sure everything was level. I screwed the new cabinet to the wall and then also screwed the cabinet to the adjacent cabinet for support. Creating one piece of cabinetry when it is all installed.
Then line up the lower cabinets and secure them to the wall in a similar fashion.
Here you can see that the drawers come all the way out which is nice and that I am matching the size of the upper cabinet so that they match in width.
I do have crown molding for them to put on the top but I will be talking about that and about the concrete countertops that I made in two other posts. So make sure to like our Facebook page DDHRanch and watch out for those new posts coming your way.
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