[kschwarz]

So I am towards the end of hanging my kitchen cabinets and then ran into a problem with the horizontal hanging cabnet. I thoug I remembered that you are suppose to hange the rail 3 inches below the top of the cabinet for horizontal cabs...and 2 1/2 inches bellow vertical hanging cabs. Turns out the both hanging rails should be a the same height in order to have th tops of the cabinets equal. Are there only certain horizontal cabs which should be hung lower then the standard wall cabnets?

Was just kind of frustrating since I could have used 1 rail across the wall and would have been able to go into more studs.

Also, for one of the cabnets I only had 1 stud available, so I used that with a #12 screw and then used 3 drywall anchors in addition. Should this be suitable or am I looking at a cabinet failure?

Thanks!

[breed]

I just remeasured mine and it is 3" for a horizontal and 2.5" for a vertical to the bottom of the rail. If you are having trouble lining up the tops I would double check the measurement and also be sure to use the play built into the system to move a cab up or down because of the mounting bracket. I don't believe there is any difference because of different door styles as they all use the same boxes

B -

[Chuck]

My experience has been the 2.5/3" measurements. If yours isn't lining up this way, it could be a design change that has recently come through. Or is it possible you're confusing a horizontally oriented "standard" cabinet (like the 30"w x 15"h cabinets that go over a fridge or microwave, but have two side mounted doors) with the "horizontal" cabinet (same measurements but a single door that mounts to the top of the cabinet)?

In terms of securing the rail to studs, you want to hit as many as possible - can you remove the adjacent standard wall cabinet and install a longer rail that catches a stud behind that adjacent cabinet? You shouldn't have "failure", but you may notice the end of the rail pulling away from the wall - if this begins to happen, there are some remedial measures you can take to make things a little more stable.

	W definition W is a wall cabinet designation, as in W18, can be a stand-in for Wide, or when followed by a / stands for With.

[kschwarz]

thanks for the replies.....

Yes, I believe I did mix up what you stated Chuck. It is a "horizontal" standard cab....30"x 15" that goes over a fridge with 2 doors. I wasn't aware that it is only the horizontal cabs which have the door swing open from the top..... It's strange because I did do some research on it and I never saw that it had to be the swing open from top horizontal cabinets which need to be hung 3" below top. Whenever I saw references it just said Horizontal, which to me means wider from left to rigth than top to bottom...

Thanks for the clairification!

As far as screwing the rails into the studs.... It seems pretty sturdy. One strange thing that happened...making me actually loose the use of one stud was while screwing in....the screw actually got "hacksawed off" due to the metal on the handrail. So the head of the screw popped off while the other end was embedded into the stud. these were #12 wood screws I believe.

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by kschwarz

As far as screwing the rails into the studs.... It seems pretty sturdy. One strange thing that happened...making me actually loose the use of one stud was while screwing in....the screw actually got "hacksawed off" due to the metal on the handrail. So the head of the screw popped off while the other end was embedded into the stud. these were #12 wood screws I believe.

If it seems sturdy, I wouldn't sweat it. One thing that most likely will NOT happen is the cabinet just "dropping" off without warning - if there is a stability issue, there will be warnings signs. You'd notice a door starting to go out of alignment, or the cabinet seeming to be out of square, or pulling away from the wall. These things would happen slowly, over time, and you'd have time to unload the cabinet and make corrections.

As for the screw head popping off, there could be a number of explanations - "cheap" screws, overstressing (12's are relatively large screws - did you drill pilot holes?), or simple overtightening, among others.. Can you try using an adjacent hole, and putting the screw in at an angle to catch the stud? You might want to drill a pilot hole or wax the screw first.