[greenie227]

And on the opposite side, if something was pretty hard last time and the time before, and it's suddenly really easy and quick, you might have forgotten a crucial step. (aka, were there extra dowels or did I just not hammer any in?)

[ndiego2000]

It's 145 a.m. Eastern Time, and I just spent all day, starting at 9 a.m. and finishing at 130 a.m. (approx. 16 hrs later) installing base cabinets, including the sink cabinet. Some of the lessons I learned today include the following:

1. Someone suggested caulking the inside bottom of the sink base cabinet - I highly recommend that this be done! While working with the plumbing, water spilled all over the base cabinet - luckily, I read this thread earlier, caulked the interior of the base cabinet (using GEII silicone) and averted potential disaster.

2. When installing a drop in stainless steel sink - plumbers putty is your BEST friend - I, unfortunately, opted for silicone caulking around the bottom edge of the sink. A complete mess to clean up afterward. If I had to do it over again, I would have used plumber's putty, which I had used to install the new garbage disposal. It's easy to work with and doesn't create the mess that silicone caulk does.

3. Tools - so far I've been able to do the entire kitchen without either a circ saw or a table saw. Quite honestly, I'm a big fearful of them. However, I was able to cut the countertop and toe kick with a fine tooth handsaw. It doesn't take long to do. While the cut may not be as fine as a circular saw, normally the rough cut will be hidden out of sight, for example, placed against the wall. I do recommend that you purchase a very good jigsaw, however. I spent 29.99 for one - totally sucks. Definitely, go for quality on your jigsaw.

That's it - i'm going to finish my apple martini (sad but true - again, I'm drinking alcohol at 130 a.m.) and go to sleep.

David

[jam_zhou]

Those legs also caused me problems. I forgot the legplates on my 24" pantry...I was too excited about installing the first cabinet. Even though it's completely installed I'm going to try and take out the legs and install the leg plates. Here's my plan. I have some extra legs so I'm going to use these as a jack then twist out the existing legs and then install the leg plates. Luckily I didn't screw in the legs.

I suppose the easy way is to just use the bare legs and put them under the vertical sides of the cabinet resulting in my pantry having eight legs. I guess the leg plate is to transfer some of the weight on the vertical walls to the legs? Otherwise the weight of the cabinet is actually on the dowels?

Well, the above was a lesson learned. On the similar note, I also forgot to look inside the legs. As a result I was short some toe-kick bracket hardware...I had to open a full set of legs just so that I had enough to install my toe kicks.

[Robyn]

My husband and I recently installed ikea cabinets. We are getting ready to do a poured concrete countertop, but your tip about the leg plates have me concerned. What is the "leg plate"? Our cabinets came with two pieces for each of the legs and I suppose I would call one a "leg" and one a "plate" - but it would not be possible to install the leg w/o the plate. Which makes me think you all are referring to something different. Can anybody clarify and set my mind at easy that we did the installation correctly?

Ditto the point about screwing the legs on before installing the cabinet!

[jam_zhou]

If you read the instructions carefully, there are more than two parts...there's the casing which attaches to the bottom of the cabinet which looks like a rectangular box, then there are the legs themselves and I believe the leg plates are small rectangular flat pieces that go between the leg and the casing. It protrudes outwards so that it supports the walls of the cabinet. If you don't install these then the weight of the entire cabinet except for the bottom shelf is actually on the dowels. I don't actually know how much these leg plates help but for a tall 24" pantry every bit of weight counts.

Note however that the instructions indicate that if you are sharing legs then you don't need these leg plates by the nature of how you install them. Sharing legs automatically make the leg casing bridge between to cabinets hence supporting the outer wall. So you only need leg plates at the ends of a run of cabinets.

[ikeafan60657]

Well that was educational. I honestly don't recall using some additional metal anything on the ends of my cabinet runs (though it was a while ago and I may have put them in without thinking about it) and now I'm freaking out a bit since the cabinets are installed, countertops and all.

Any suggestions? If I were to lay on the floor with a flashlight, would I be able to see the metal plates? If they're not there, any thoughts on how to add them at this late date?

Thanks.

[jam_zhou]

As far as I understand it, these aren't metal plates...they're plastic.

You should be able to see them if you look under. It'll be easier if you just feel them at the edge of your cabinet.

I haven't tried it yet, but you should be able to put them in if you didn't screw the leg casing into the cabinet. I was thinking of adding some temporary support, shortening the legs to take them out then add the plate and increase the height back up to normal. I would of course do one leg at a time.

Look here for some pictures...
Mounting the Legs

[geodame]

Just finished the installation of by Adel Birch cabinets and had the granite countertops put in yesterday. I had a friend you had done one other Ikea installation do this installation.
Lessons learned
1) It was worth every penny to hire someone very familiar with Ikea cabinets to put together my cabinets and then rent a U-Haul to deliver them 450 miles away to my home. (I had about 25’ of top cabinets and another 25’ of bottom cabinets) Took them 2 days for $300 would have taken me at least a week.
2) Preparation of the design! Give yourself some time (a few months) with the design of your kitchen. It is amazing how things change and Eureka moments happen at 2 in the morning. My first design, I had my refrigerator at the opening of my kitchen (galley style) to the living room. We changed it to the back since is deeper than the cabinets and it now looks like the kitchen is 10X bigger. This caused another problem, right after installation was complete and finishing the final touches, I realized the stove was next to the fridge (which had cover panels). Yikes! I didn’t have enough room to turn my pot handles any other place then to the inside of the stove and forget elbow room. Thank goodness we were able to place a 30” cabinet next to the fridge and now there is plenty of room for all my cooking ingredients.
3) Handles and Draws. The best thing we came up with was where there used to have a corner cabinet. The back of that corner faced and breakfast nook and living area. Instead of doing a lazy Suzan and wasting space, we did a 24” cabinet facing the breakfast nook and two 15 inch cabinets facing the inside of the kitchen. Extra storage now for the stereo hooked up to the backyard and the CDs. One problem with the 15” cabinets. The handles I picked out were the Lansa (I believe) that extend out about ½”. This caused my 15” four draw cabinet to hit the cabinet adjacent. Only work around for us was to use a small router and cut down the metal pieces on the handle that caused them to stick out. Barely notice it at all. Just account for this when setting cabinets into position. Making a template for the handle holes is a must!
4) Also, we wanted to place a cabinet (the 36” wide but not long) over the sink but wanted everything symmetrical. Used a couple of filler pieces to make it happen where one is 1 ½” and the other 2” to account for non-custom cabinets. Can’t tell the difference in the width at all.
5) Toe kicks with dishwasher. We decided to place toe kick beneath the dishwasher for flow purposes. Look great but does need to be removed when the plumber comes for installation
6) Must let granite glue cure for 36 hours before a plumber comes. Didn’t know until granite guy was leaving and I had the plumber scheduled for the next day. Bummer another delay.
7) Phases of remodel are important! Well in October it will be a year of remodeling. From double joint compounding a whole house of dark wood paneling (then adding textured paint with up to five coats for perfection of no trace of paneling), scrapping all the ceiling of heavy popcorn with ceiling, changing every light fixture, moving door locations, knocking out walls, replacing carpet with Bamboo and taking on an entire kitchen redesign, I am not touching another thing for at least 6 months. Okay maybe the front door since it is starting to fall apart and a garden would be nice. Hire people for the stuff you can’t do well or would take way to much time in comparison the amount of money it would cost to hire someone.
8) Smile and be proud of all the hardwork you have done.

[orangemonkey]

Well, I’m not quite done yet so I still have more opportunities to screw up but here are my lessons learned so far:

1) Drywall – Because we had soffits to rip out, a built in pantry to demo, damage on ceiling due to popcorn scraping, and all the old wiring in the kitchen was being totally replaced, we went ahead and ripped out all the drywall in the kitchen and redid it ourselves. Umm, I wouldn’t do it again. Not only was it really heavy and very difficult (for us), but it just doesn’t look as nice as if a pro had done it. The seams are noticeable. So, my lesson is that sometimes you should hire a pro, even if you are willing to do the hard work. You may be more satisfied with the outcome.

2) Ordering – Read the posts and articles on putting in your order first. I won’t go into all the gory details, but we had a lot of problems with our order. About half were my fault and half were my Ikean’s, so it seems that you really have to know and understand all the parts and the process before ordering. My order was not arranged by cabinet, so it was very tricky to check. Thankfully my local Ikea isn’t too far away. I’ve been to Ikea no less than 5 times to return parts/doors and order different ones. Also, triple check that you have all the right doors before starting to drill them for handles (we drilled before installing the doors and drawers, I don’t know if others do it that way).

3) Partition for 30” and 36” drawer cabs - We didn’t realize we needed this part installed since it comes separate from the cabinet stuff. They need to be installed in the cabinets before the countertop went on (they screw in from the top). We had to rig it: went ahead and screwed in the long screws into the top of the partition, then cut off the screw head. Then we used Loctite on the screws and inserted them into the holes in the top of the cabinet to correctly center the partition and provided some stability. Then we used two L brackets on each side, and added a second metal partition rail to the back. It worked, they are quite sturdy. Still, I recommend, you know, doing it the right way.

4) Tiling – I’m a rookie at this. I learned that whatever you do, don’t mix your thinset too thin. Ditto grout. Also, I learned you can pull out the outlets farther from the wall to accommodate tile behind the outlet cover for a nice clean look (I learned this after the tile was installed and cut to but up against the outlet cover instead – lovely Ikeafans folks pointed me to how to correct and/or buy oversize outlet covers)

That’s all I can think of for now. If nothing else, I learned that I am capable of doing a lot more than I thought, and that everything takes twice as long as you think it will!

[zeuss]

In order to make knob installation easier and more accurate, buy a centre finding ruler or centre finding tape measure. This way, you're sure to place the template exactly lined up with the centre of the drawer front without any math. Also, use a sharpie to mark the plastic drilling template so you don't get mixed up which hole is which.


"One of the most frequent functions you have to perform with a measurement is finding the center. These center-finding tapes make it simple. The top edge of the tape has normal graduations, while the opposite edge has 1/2 scale graduations. To divide 57-5/8" in half, just read 57-5/8" from the bottom scale – it's that simple."
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...58&cat=1,43513


http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...70&cat=1,43513