push 'em in and then pull them back out

I had all of my base cabinets pushed into place and even leveled this week. Then we realized that we need to have baseboard installed. If water runs across the floor and there is no baseboard, the drywall with just suck up all that moisture.


So, pull them all back out again. Put up the trim, paint and caulk the the trim and shove them all back into place. Re-level them all since I had to move them an inch to the right. Yes, the floor varies that much.

I am hoping to have them screwed to the wall sometime this morning. Only question I have is, how so you decided how far they should come out from the wall and what is parallel to a wall that isn't flat?

MISTAKES - more bad measureing

The sink side of the kitchen has a 5 inch gap at the end. ugly
Oh well, I will just have to live with that

The stove side of the kitchen has a inch of cabinet poking past the doorway. oops
Okay, I go and get a 24" base cabinet and find another use for a 30" base cabinet.

The plug for the microwave is set outside the width of the tall, deep cabinet. stupid
That should have been a easy measurement. That will be a easy fix, the wall behind it is not drywalled yet.

I am sure I had the kitchen designed before the electrical went in. Why didn't I just draw the cabinets onto the floor?

I don't know how I made all these mistakes. No I take that back, I know how some of them came about. The light switch was installed without my input and I knew it was in a bad place, there just wasn't anywhere else to put it. What I should have done was measure out the cabinets before we assembled them, so we could return them. (I have enough extra now to start a wall of cabinets in the basement)

Biggest problem isn't the non returnable cabinets, I am sure I will find a use for them, it is that whenever I need a new cabinet from IKEA, I can buy the basic frame and take it with me. But I have to special order in all the doors and either pay shipping from Salt Lake City or drive there and get them myself.

And now I have to make a second special order and that will mean a second special trip to SLC.

I did want to put all the base cabinets in their places and look it over weeks ago and my husband said, "Why bother?"

starting on the base cabinets

We decided to go with the Capita legs and forget the little plastic legs and the toe kick boards. I saw this done on IKEA FANS site - someone had posted pictures of their kitchen and the dark wood with light cabinets looked great on those chrome legs. We picked up the legs last week and got them all screwed on this Sunday.

the wall cabinet vs light switch fix is up

We hit IKEA last week when we were in Salt Lake taking the kids to Lagoon. We picked up two 30"x30" wall cabinets to replace the 2 39"x30" cabinets that interfered with a badly placed light switch. I think it is a pretty good solution after all. It will look like we designed that way.

back to work!

The floor is finished. Yeah!

We had a major set back when the first install of the floor was a disaster. It looks like Lumber Liquidators gave us a bunch of 'Odd Lot' boxes instead of 'Select' Flooring. Translated that means we got boxes full of tapered pieces, or ones that were thinner than normal or ones that had miss cut grooves. We found this out after a room and a half had been finished. It took 2 weeks at least to get LL to correct the problem and replace the floor.

Gee, another whole month of nothing getting done on my house remodel. No wonder 4 to 6 weeks is now into its 7th month.

MISTAKE - that window is not where I need it to be

This is something I can't correct. I needed the edge of the window to be 76" from the left edge of the room. It ended up at 75". The problem is that I have exactly 75" of base cabinets going in on that wall and I will need an inch at the end for the cabinet door to open.

I guess it will only be noticeable to me, that the sink is off by an inch from the window, I hope.

The other side is ending up with a huge gap at the end because of this problem. I have to have both sets of upper cabinets the same distance to the edge of the window. Since the left side is now at 8 inches instead of 9, the right side had to move over an inch. An inch shouldn't be a problem but I had already factored in an inch at the wall and a inch at the side of the frig. That brings the gap to 3 inches along the wall cabinets above the frig. Well it should be 3 inches but it is actually 5 inches. Oh yeah, that wall leans out at the top. Too bad, extra space at the bottom might be useful along the side of the frig. That is where my mother hides her broom and dust pan.

the first cabinets to be set in place

These three are now up to stay! Yeah!

We even tried out one of the doors. If you don't get your hinges to 'CLICK!' like the instruction show, you have probably installed the inside the cabinet part backwards.

The IKEA FAN site saved us from spending hours trying to figure out why the hinges wouldn't go together.

We have to wait until next week to pick up the replacement 30" x 30" wall cabinet to finish this side.

I should have done this days ago

I finally dealt with all the ripped open bags of extra parts from all the assembled cabinets.

I now have a bag of extra nails, wood screws needed to attach the counter tops, the squares and bolts for the rail, and the square washer and nut for the inside of each cabinet.

And I am a lot less worried about having to drive 2 and half hours to get a missing part from IKEA.

details, details, details

I found a post on IKEA FANS titled Fess Up!! Lessons Learned During Installation.
From that post, I learned that you have to put your drawer supports in before you place the base cabinets, especially 30" and 36" cabinets. I also learned that you should go through your IKEA order and find out which cabinets have extra parts. I went through and highlighted the part number and then the whole name when I was done.



















I thought I was done with my 3 drawer cabinets, when I discovered 3 more sets of drawer parts. So I had 9 15" drawer boxes number 30107066 and 3 15" drawer boxes number 4010708. I had already opened and installed a 401 instead of a 301 but it turns out that the supports are all the same, only the drawer part is different.

I discovered that I could break the wrap on the drawer boxes and just lift out the support bars and the bag of parts. This way the drawer parts all stay in their plastic wrap and won't get lost. We are still dealing with getting our hardwood floor in, so the IKEA stuff keeps getting moved and moved again.

TIP - put the drawer supports in before placing base cabinets

I found a post on IKEA FANS titled Fess Up!! Lessons Learned During Installation.
From that post, I learned that you have to put your drawer supports in before you place the base cabinets, especially 30" and 36" cabinets. There is an extra support beam that goes down the middle of the cabinet. You can install it with the cabinet in place, but you won't be able to nail the backing board to that support beam.


I also learned that you should go through your IKEA order and find out which cabinets have extra parts. I went through and highlighted the part number and then the whole name when I was done. I just finished up putting in all of my drawer supports.

who needs instuctions....

ME!

When I started this blog, I found the Ikea Hacks blog and from that I found IKEA FANS site.

If I had not, I would have no idea how to put my kitchen together. I had many different service reps at IKEA direct and not one mentions instructions on how to put this stuff together. I thought the assembly instructions were all I needed. WRONG!

IKEA FANS also has a section of all of IKEA's instruction pages in case you threw out the one you really need.

Also on their site, there are downloaded versions of IKEA's installation posters and pages, plus a video you can watch. click here