Tips on how to set up Ikea cabinets for a kitchen installation

today i'm going to talk about installing ikea kitchen cabinets i'm a great fan of ikea's and i've done a few projects and the more i work with it the more impressed i am with the precision at which these flat packs are put together the instructions are pretty adequate but there's always some modifications that have to take place for your specific circumstances and i'll talk about that in a minute but the first thing i want to do is just explain basically how the ikea cabinets work and why they're so good right first of all one of the problems that we have when we setting up a kitchen is that all the cabinets have to be perfectly level so that when your countertop comes it fits perfectly on the cabinets and there's no rocking and that's particularly important if you're having a stone countertop there's very little room for aero with stone countertops and that's where ikea comes in with a brilliant system and i'll just explain that to you now everything works off a rail and all you have to do is set this rail up perfectly level your cabinets hang off this rail so once the rail is level you don't have to worry about the cabinets you just hang the back of the cabinet on the rail and then you adjust any other discrepancies with adjustable feet and i'll show you those in a minute but this is how the rail works this is the back of a cabinet now and you'll notice there are these little hooks that are set on all the cabinets and they sit precisely in the same region and there's very little error there so you you put your rail on the wall this is the back of the rail this is the front of the rail that's the top and that's the bottom and these holes are for attaching so let's just show you how that works so the rails hook on the hooks and you can see the whole cabinet is pivoting off that rail so everything depends on how accurately you set up the rail but once you've set up the rail then it becomes very easy after that right now just to show you how the rail and the hanging hooks come together i've got a little piece of rail here and a hook separate so you just hook the top part of the hook onto the bottom part of the rail like that and then you'll notice there's a little bit of movement and that's so that you can adjust the legs a little bit and get your levels right so that's how that works and then to take it off obviously you lift it up a little bit and then you move it away now the next adjustment that you've got is the feet so the back of the cabinets will all be level because of the rail but the front of the cabinet can still vary because um the floor might not be level right that's the back of the cabinet this is the bottom of the cabinet these holes are pre-drilled very very accurately for the feet and the feet come with a little base plate and a removable foot that just comes out very easily base plate that goes into those holes like that and you press it into place it's pretty tight fit but make sure you get it in all the way otherwise things aren't going to work so well then these feet are removable and you just slip them in and out when you need them don't leave them on until you're about to install the cabinet because if you move these by dragging them across the floor they break very easily because they're plastic so that's one tip you need to know then the adjustment comes there you see they're on a screw and ikea normally asks you to set your cabinet eight centimeters off the floor so that there's eight centimeters and you'll see there's one centimeter adjustment to go up or down you can go down a lot more but you can't go up much more than one centimeter if you set it up like they do if your floor is very uneven you've got the option of just ignoring their instructions and maybe giving yourself a little bit more adjustment there now the other thing about these feet i just want to show you on the other side if let's say on this side there's another cabinet butting up against this one so what you can do here is you can put the feet to span both cupboards so you only need one foot then and the nice thing about that is it levels the bottom of the cabinets together and then you can put the foot like that or like that and so that's quite a handy innovation as well and these are the kind of things that ikea have evolved over the years just by trying to improve all the time and some of these systems are quite brilliant so let's say let's pretend this is the front of the cabinet just for the sake of argument now i just want to show you how cleverly they've come with the plinth idea the plinths attach to these little brackets which just clip onto your feet so once you've got everything set up and you ready to finish your cabinets you just clip them on like that and then he has a bit of plymouth sorry i'll just put it the right way around there's a bit of plinth and if i measure the plinth low and behold it's 8 centimeters which is exactly that distance there provided your floor is level of course then what happens is when you've got these on you put them it's best to put them on here first before you clip them on the legs you put them on like that and then you twist and as you twist it locks behind these little channels and then you just have to plug your plinth on like that and any unevenness in the floor you'll notice there's a little rubber seal right at the bottom here and that seals against your floor it's a silicon almost like a windscreen wiper of a motor vehicle and it also allows a little bit of unevenness in the floor so that's all very clever so that's basically how the system works and so now we've just got to adapt that to our situation now one of the things you have to do is to just check first of all that all electrics and plumbing are done because you can't do them after the cabinets are in and it's ready for installation some of the electrics will have to be done after installation but you do everything you can before you put the cabinets in now the first thing i do is to just check that the floor is more or less level um within a centimeter so that i can set up everything according to ikea's instructions which is obviously the best way to go because that's how everything's designed so you just chuck a spirit level on the floor you can see that's pretty level uh then you've got to move it obviously i'll move it to where the front of the cabinets will be and that's that's still pretty level and then you can also with a short spirit level run the other way and check it that way and again pretty level so i haven't got any worries with the floor so i can proceed the next thing you have to do is decide what kind of construction you're dealing with in your wall i've got a drywall here that's supported with wooden studs but some houses they are metal studs so you have to be aware of that and some houses will be brick so you have to be aware of that and obviously that affects how you're going to attach your rail to the wall now in my case it's wooden studs they 35 millimeter studs exact that wide and so i have marked all the studs on the wall before i start the other thing you need to be aware of that some of these studs may have an electric cable running through the middle of them so when you're choosing your fasteners you have to be aware that if you use a very long fastener you might drill into an electric cable and if you drill into electric cable let me tell you that's a headache so or a water pipe something like that so just be aware of that um when you choose the length of your fasteners and i'll talk about that in a moment i've got a few fasteners here there's a few fasteners now i quite like these hex fasteners because they stout and robust and they can take a lot of weight and in a house with drywall and 35 millimeter wooden studs you can only get an attachment to your rail about once every 60 centimeters or so so you want something quite robust to be holding your rail now if you look at this one if i use this length and i put it there can you see what's going to happen if i happen to be lucky enough to hit an electric cable i'll go right through it so i i'd like to choose something about that length is a that's a bit long but you've got to remember you've got a drywall there and you've got the rail which is a millimeter or two so if i put that there that looks quite safe to me these are 30 millimeters long this is 70 millimeters and that's 10 so i should be all right with a 30 millimeter fastener so important to check those the other thing about these if you're using a hex they do stick out a bit so just be sure that you're going to be able to get your cabinet on you usually can but just be sure it's not going to interfere with the brackets on the cabinet uh when you come to hang it if you have metal studs in your wall you'll need one of these fasteners which has a little drill on the end and it pre-taps the the hole for the screw and these button heads are pretty good for this job and you can see that'll be right even if there is a cable in the wall and if you've got a brick wall you might have to use something like this which is a plastic plug that will go into the wall these are quite handy there's the plug and the nail that goes with it but that you'll have to decide yourself depending on your circumstances so now we're ready to start setting up the rail which is the most important step because as i said everything hangs on the rail so if you get that level the rest of your life is made very very easy by ikea so let's get on to that now ikea and i would suggest you always follow the instructions where you can occasionally you're going to have to go away from the instructions because of your specific situation but always follow the instructions where you can now ikea tell you to sit the bottom of the rail at eight for the for your base cabinets ikea tell you to set the bottom of the rail at 82 centimeters off the ground so that's what we do first we get a tape and a pencil and i've already set it up here i've written and always write what these lines are because after a week or two you've got so many lines you don't know what they're there for so there we go that's 82 centimeters for the bottom of the rail okay then you can either come off that point with a spirit level and draw a line all the way around or if you're lucky enough like i am to have a a laser leveler and this one i've set up already it just has to settle down a bit so there's my laser having shown me i've set it up on that mark that i put there with a pencil and then i can go all the way around and make some more marks and then what i always do is join those marks with the spirit level just to check that the laser is not malfunctioning i don't trust all modern technology and you'll see here i've marked this is going to be a tall cabinet here so my rail has to come up to there but just make sure you stop a little bit short i normally set it up about five millimeters short of the end of the cabinet and the reason for that is i don't want it to stick out a because in some cases you might see the rail and b because it might interfere with this tall cabinet that's going right up against it all right so now we've walked a few spots for the bottom of the rail and i just check everything with my spirit level as i said i don't trust these things 100 and there you can see it's pretty level so i've got no worries there so now i'll just draw my line that's the bottom of the rail so we'll just set up i'm also going to mark the top of the rail because the bottom of the rail for the lower rails is quite hard to see without lying on the ground but at this stage i'm just marking the length that i want and unfortunately this rail is not going to go all the way so i'm going to have to put a join somewhere so i'm lucky here i've got a very broad stud there three studs together obviously a structural beam so i'll cut the rail somewhere here and then add a piece on the end there mostly attached to this so now we're ready to put the rail up i've measured it and i cut a little piece for the end and i just wanted to say something about finding your studs in the wall i don't completely trust a stud finder to find the stud in the wall accurately because it can give you a vague idea of where it is but it doesn't give you the exact border and you need to know that when you're drilling into them so i i use this old-fashioned all a narrow little all to probe the drywall to find my stud exactly where it is and also find it's a useful tool if you're working on your own and i'll show you now so now we're ready to put the rail up now normally put my first fastener somewhere in the middle now this is where i use my little helper here and if you just probe it into the drywall and he holds the one side for me while i put a screw in the other side now i care supply you with these washes uh that help they help quite a lot to stabilize when you set them up you set them up with that tail going upwards and you want to end somewhere in the middle of that hole and just get it going and slip that to that end and line it up again before you tighten and these little washers are fantastic because this rail twists a little bit it helps to stabilize it now once you've got that in everything's kind of all right now you can just go and i'll just show you at the end here a couple of places my studs uh didn't line up with with a hole pre-drilled so i had to drill a hole for that one so i'll put this one in next now you'll notice i had to join the rail here because it's not long enough but this little bracket if i put it like that it's going to help to stabilize that joint between the two just leave it a bit loose to start with and then we can slip that one in there line it up just get it a bit tighter so that's holding back there now i think in this situation here i'm going to use a little button head screw just to anchor this in then right at the end because there's no stud there i'm going to use one of these plasterboard plugs that's just to stop it from flapping and then i just need one more just make sure everything's tight and then there's a couple more to do down the line here we go and then finally when the rail's up just check your level and that's pretty good now i just wanted to say a final word about attaching the rail to your drywall ikea recommend that you attach your rail every 30 centimeters to the wall but in the case of a drywall like this one for instance the studs are 60 centimeters apart there's no point putting an attachment into the drywall it's not going to hold anything so what i've done to try and get around that an ikea don't really give you a solution so check with your own building professionals but what i've done is i've used more robust and longer attachments where i'm sure that there's no electrics or plumbing in the wall and that's the way i've got around it and i've done this is the second kitchen i'm doing and the first kitchen was my own kitchen and that seems to be okay after about three years now so it seems to be holding so that's one way around it another thing you could consider doing is putting a batten a wooden batten right across all the studs and then attaching your rail to that but the problem with that is you're going to bring the cabinets out from the wall and then they're going to hang at an angle so i really don't know what ikea solution for that is but that's what i've done right now we've reached the moment of truth i'm going to show you how to hang one of these cupboards i'm not hanging it in the exact position that it's going to end up in and i would suggest you work with two people and you put the legs on but make them a little bit shorter than they should be because if the legs contact the floor especially at the back the rail hanging brackets on the back of the cabinet here might not engage the rail and if that doesn't hang on the rail it's not going to be level so you've got to make sure that the legs are a little bit shorter than you want them but not too short because once it's under the cabinet and you have to change it you have to line the floor get your arm in the back there and it's a bit of a strain i'm gonna hang this one by myself i don't have an assistant other than my camera person but she's got a job to do so there we go i'll just show you how the hanging goes so you lift it up and you just get one side on the rail the other side on the rail make sure it's on the rail you can see it's swinging there now when i put the spirit level across here i haven't got any legs on my because i'm just demonstrating i'm going to take this down again now you can see that's level so it's level in this direction but we've got to check level in this direction as well so i'm putting the short spirit level on there and that's not bad actually i may have to just when i put the feet on i'll have to just lengthen them slightly to get it level once this cabinet's set in its final position you put up the next door one and then ikea provide you with screws or little bolts to put the two cabinets together and you do that put a clamp clamp it in position before you join them so that everything is perfect check all your levels right across all the cabinets and then join them the last thing you do is join the cabinets together now in some instances there'll be electrics and plumbing that have to be accounted for in hanging your cupboard so you'll need to cut out for the in this case it's a kitchen sink so you'll need to cut out for the taps you'll need to cut out for the power point for the dishwasher and you'll need to cut out for the waste pipe so you can have a look at this sink cupboard that we've already prepared for that it's top left is the tips bottom right is the power point for the dishwasher and right at the bottom there is for the waste pipe and remember when you're marking these things that your cupboard is going to be eight centimeters off the ground and it's a little way away from the wall so just be careful when you're calculating where to cut that you take that into account and there's the sink cupboard in place and leveled and fortunately all the holes line up where they should now we have to cut out for plumbing particularly this waste pipe it's an idea to seal the cut edge with i use polyurethane and just normal paint on top of it the reason for that is if you do happen to get a leak and it runs onto your chipboard of the cabinet that chipboard will absorb water and swell so it's a good idea to seal it from water so that that's the bottom cabinets in place and all lined up to set the level of your top rail for your eye level cupboards that's a bit variable because they're going to be different counter top thicknesses and different cooking apparatus need different clearance for gas for instance will need more clearance than an induction so all those things can vary and then short people might want the count the eye level cupboards lower and tall people might want them higher so that's all very variable so the way i would suggest that you do it is you get something the same thickness as your counter top is going to be put it as if it was the counter top and then mark the level and then measure from where the top of your countertop is to whatever you want the distance to be between your counter top and your cupboard ours we've decided on 58 so if i went from there needed 58 make a mark now if you're using 80 height high level cupboards which is the usual story then you can measure from your 58 mark that's the height of the bottom of the eye level cupboards so to get the rail height we measure the same distance as we did for the base cabinets and we subtract the height of the legs which is eight so we measured 82 off the floor for the base cabinets so now we're going to measure 82 minus 8. so 82 minus 8 is 74. so if i make a mark there now that's going to be the bottom of my rail for the eye level cupboards and then again you set it up from that mark pull it straight across with the spirit level or a laser if you've got one and then screw your rail up to your battens or your wall of whatever construction it is and then put your eye level cupboards on that rail now that rail has to be a bit more secure than the bottom cupboards because the bottom cupboards have got feet that are supporting some of their weight so on those top cupboards because all the weight is on the rail you need to make sure that the rail is very securely attached to the wall now because ikea only make the cabinets in a limited range of sizes very often it's not going to fit exactly into your available space and in fact you should have a little bit of extra space at the end because if cupboards aren't exactly square in that you might have a problem fitting them in so in our case we're going to have a little space on the side like this and you've got two choices here ones ikea recommends you can put a cover panel to close up that space but what you can also do is make a custom little cupboard here and on the bottom as well and those little slots are quite useful for things like cutting boards and trays and that sort of thing to store them in your kitchen so always bear that in mind you can always use that space for something now just a couple of final points we were talking earlier about setting the height between your counter top and your eye level cupboards and you can vary it from what ikea recommends but if you've got a tall cupboard here like we've got here it's a 220 cupboard and you want the top of your tall cupboard to line up with your eye level cupboards on this rail up here then you have to stick to ikea's recommended distances because once you set the bottom rail for the counter top cupboards and you have an eight centimeter gap below the cupboard for your plinth you must have that for your tall cupboard as well otherwise the bottom of your cupboards and your plinth's not going to work so that's a point to bear in mind if you are thinking of varying the height between the countertop and the high level cupboards it doesn't matter if you don't have a tall cupboard involved because then you can set the rail according to what you want now the second point i wanted to mention is the situation we've had here where the wall is not flush this wall is not flush it dips in in this region so what i've had to do is pack behind this rail here to make sure that it runs flush because if the rail bends at all then your cupboards are not going to come off the wall at the same angle and you will get gaps i'll just explain it with this little model i've got on the floor here if if you imagine that these two squares are your cupboards and your wall changes angle at the back on one of them like that you can see what's going to happen you're going to get a gap there or the other way also if you have a different angle at the back piece so that rail has to be perfectly straight and if the wall is not straight you have to keep the rail straight otherwise this is going to happen so that's about it and the rest of it is just mundane assembling flat packs hanging them on the wall joining them making sure everything's level before the countertop people come in and measure up now if you found this useful please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel if you haven't already done so and if you have any questions or comments we'd love to hear from you just scroll right down to the bottom you'll find the comments section there good luck with any diy you'll be doing in the near future and hope things work out well thank you very much for watching you

Channel: AnnMatt Erasmus

Views: 19,295

Rating: 4.9119496 out of 5

Keywords: Ikea cabinets, Ikea Kitchens, Ikea kitchen, ikea kitchen cabinet, ikea kitchen cabinets installation, how to install ikea cabinets, how to install an ikea metod kitchen, installing ikea kitchen cabinets, Ikea metod kitchen installation, Ikea metod cabinets, how to level kitchen cabinets, spirit level, laser level, attaching kitchen cabinets to the wall, how to cut out for plumbing and electrics, kitchen sink, kitchen plumbing and electrics

Id: lRJgIw5nXhY

Length: 33min 13sec (1993 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021