Complete as much prep work as possible before installing the cabinets. Take care of any electrical and plumbing changes as well as wall smoothing, patching or painting. When your cabinets arrive, check them for damage and make sure you"ve received everything you ordered.
Here’s a home improvement job that’ll give you instant home equity along with great visual impact. Installing your own kitchen cabinets isn’t as difficult as you might think, but it does require some basic carpentry skills.
Kitchen cabinets today are a modern wonder with all kinds of cool space-saving features, smooth-gliding drawers and pull-out shelves. The contemporary price tag can be $5,000 to $15,000 per kitchen.
Making kitchen cabinets look good requires some carpentry experience, a steady hand and a willingness to be fussy enough to make things fit, despite the obstacles. It’s more involved than screwing boxes together. You need to know how to use a circular saw, read a level and follow a plan with precision. If you don’t have the necessary temperament or skill level, you can still enjoy all the benefits of new cabinets by having them installed by a pro. (Figure on at least $1,200 labor for a modest-size kitchen.) If you do decide to tackle the job yourself, just follow the step-by-step photos. Read the text for wall and floor prep and special tips to make the job go faster and easier.
The cabinet supplier will help design your kitchen—for free!
These days, you pretty much get what you pay for in the competitive cabinet market. The more you spend, the better the hardware, finish and built-in features you’ll get. Buy the best cabinets you can afford—you’ll probably be living with them for a very long time. Even with all the cabinets I’ve installed over the years, I still wouldn’t dream of ordering my cabinets without consulting a professional cabinet representative at a full-service lumberyard or a home center. A professional will walk you through all the cabinet styles and finishes, latest features and sizing options.
Doing the research on your own would take hours of digging and phoning. Just bring accurate measurements of your kitchen showing door and window locations along with plumbing and electrical placement. Many consultants will put your design into a computer program that’ll let you view your design from any angle for a complete preview of your new dream kitchen. Don’t settle for one designer’s input before making a decision. As with a medical diagnosis, it’s always best to get a second opinion.
Once you make your selection and place an order, expect to wait four to six weeks for your new cabinets to arrive—most manufacturers fill orders to your specifications.
What to do with all those boxes
When your cabinets finally arrive, you’ll have more cardboard to deal with than an average-sized grocery store (Photo 1). Find a large open area, get some help and carefully open each box (don’t cut through them or you may slice the front of a drawer or door) and lift out each cabinet. Plan ahead how to get rid of the cardboard boxes. Most cities that recycle will pick them up, but you might have to make other arrangements.
Inspect the cabinets for any damage and call the supplier if you notice any problems. Store the cabinets in a dry area where they’re easily accessible. Excess moisture will ruin your cabinets. We cleared out the adjacent dining room and kept ours there during the two days it took us to install them.
You can do the whole job with simple portable tools
Some tools worth having for this job are a good 4-ft. level (6-ft. if you’ve got the budget) and a pair of Quick- Grip clamps as shown in Photo 12. These tools will help make the difference between a good job and a great job. You’ll of course need a drill, power screwdriver, circular saw, belt sander and jigsaw.
Be sure you’ve also got access to a solid 6-ft. stepladder. Rent a finish nailer ($45 a day with compressor) for the final day of installation to attach trim, especially if you’re installing crown molding.
Do all prep work before the cabinets arrive
Before your new cabinets arrive, remove your old ones and make any changes in the plumbing and electrical layout as well as fix any nasty spots in the walls. Most kitchen remodeling means redoing the floor as well. If you have a wood floor, you may find that the planking doesn’t run under your old cabinets, or you could even discover three layers of vinyl. We removed our old vinyl and laid new underlayment as a base for our vinyl tile. You can lay your floor first and risk scuffing it, or install it later and fit the flooring around the cabinets.
It’s a lot simpler and faster to paint the room first and resign yourself to a touch-up once the job is done. When the paint is dry, locate all the wall studs and mark them (in most homes, studs are 16 in. from center to center).
Check all the walls for plumb (straight up and down) and check the corner for square (Photo 2). Most walls are not perfect and a 1/8-in. variance in vertical is common. If you find more than 3/8-in. variance from plumb from the top to the bottom of a wall, however, you may want to hire a professional installer.
If your walls aren’t plumb, you may need to slide the corner cabinet away from the wall a bit to make up for the leaning wall. For example, if one wall tips in 1/4 in., you’ll need to hold the top of the base cabinet about 1/8 in. away from the wall so that the upper wall cabinet can be tight against the wall. This will all make sense once you start drawing the exact cabinet dimensions on the wall (see Photo 3). Keep in mind that whatever adjustment you make will affect the countertop installation later on. Most standard countertops allow a 1-in. overhang in front of the cabinet, so holding a cabinet out from the wall will affect the fit. A small variation of 1/4 in. here and there is common.
As you can see in Fig. A, there are slight differences between frameless (Euro-style) cabinets and traditional face frame cabinets. Frameless cabinets are essentially a box with visible front edges. The face frame cabinets have a hardwood frame that is attached to the sides, top and bottom and overhangs each side 1/4 in.
The frameless cabinets we show in our installation are a bit tougher to install because there is no margin for hiding errors—the side edge of the cabinet doesn’t overhang like on the face frame cabinet. They also tend to be considerably heavier than face frame cabinets. In addition, frameless cabinets have very tight door and drawer clearances that make the panels look continuous, giving them a clean look. However, these tight clearances can make frameless cabinets difficult to adjust precisely, and the doors may need readjustment every now and then. Face frame cabinets have larger
deviations less noticeable.
Because face frame cabinets have a hardwood frame that overhangs each side (see Fig. A), you need
to really pay attention to the dimensions of the actual cabinet vs. the size of the face frame when you’re aligning your cabinets to marks on the walls. Frameless cabinets have exact dimensions from the front to the back, so there’s no extra figuring when you align them to the wall locations you’ve drawn (Photo 3).
Original article and pictures take http://www.familyhandyman.com/DIY-Projects/Indoor-Projects/Kitchens/Kitchen-Cabinets/frameless-kitchen-cabinets/Step-By-Step site
">
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий