Hang Ikea Cabinets, step by step

This post was shaping up to be a weird one (well, weirder than our baseline weird). We were simultaneously trying to hang Ikea cabinets in our laundry room and re-hook up the washer & dryer, but as of yesterday morning we were sort of stuck half-way through both projects and this was the best progress shot we thought we’d have for you today:

But thanks to some last minute pieces falling into place over the last 24 hours, we have working appliances that have been fully re-installed (picture Sherry dancing for no less than twenty minutes with an elated baby in her arms laughing at her) and doors on our all of our cabinets (more dancing – also singing). I will get into appliance installation details next week (getting the overflow drain and washer pan connected took some effort) but today is all about cabinets.

We have been wanting to take Ikea cabinets for a spin since we are heavily considering them for our eventual kitchen remodel. We hear strong things about them and fairly consistently see them popping up in high end homes thanks to magazines like Dwell, Domino, and House Striking, yet we have gone a bunch of other routes in the past. We have done the custom cabinet thing in our first house, and the second-hand / work-with-what-you’ve-got thing in our second house (we refinished our existing cabinets and brought in used ones from the Habitat ReStore). It is funny that despite all of the Ikea in our life, we have never in fact dabbled in their cabinetry. So the laundry room felt like a ideal lower-risk test space to learn the process and to assist us determine if we want to go this route in the kitchen down the line.

We began by using their online Kitchen Planner to map out the space. We in fact used it before to assist envision our last kitchen, even though we were not purchasing their cabinets. In general it is a fairly straightforward (and free!) online tool to play around with – although I did have to insert a dishwasher into my plan, since they do not have a dryer option. Before long we had a plan and a shopping list that we could print out and bring to the store.

The above shot is the plan after the kitchen expert at Ikea helped us fine-tune things. I am glad we arrived with an idea of what we hoped (it saved a ton of time!) but I am also glad we consulted with one of their employees before our purchase (it saved some unnecessary purchases when she went through the list and explained that some things were not necessary for this type of installation). She also helped to point out some trim that we might want to add to hide our under cabinet lighting (last minute decision = under cabinet lighting, simply to assist us see & treat stains more easily).

While we were there, we also made a change in our cabinet door decision. Online the Ramsjo looked closest to what we hoped, but in person it had more of a whitewashed wood look (with some pink undertones). The Adel, even though it was labeled “off-white” appeared to be a lot closer to the solid white look we hoped. It was not perfectly white, but we are used to Ikea stuff being ever so slightly creamy.

Everything was in stock, so about an hour (and 800-some-dollars) later we were packed up and back on the road. Which was a good thing since we were doing this on a Friday afternoon, which is fairly much the last time you should attempt traveling I-95 South near Ikea (we were doing a few other things in the area, so it certainly would not have been the time we’d pick if we were simply hitting Ikea and returning home).

We gritted our teeth through the normal rush hour / summer Friday traffic. And simply as we got through it… they closed the highway entirely because a truck spilled acid all over the road. Sooooo yeah. I trip that is normally two hours took about three times that long.

Once we had them home, it was time to put them together, which we hear is the most dreaded part of an Ikea kitchen. It was not so bad for us since we were only assembling three upper cabinets and one lower one. Plus, we did the three uppers assembly-line-style (not to be confused with Gangnam Style) so it went faster.

In fact, the most annoying part was nailing the panels on the back of each one, and that was not even that bad (it simply took a while since there were around 24 nails for each cabinet).

I have to say, we were both fairly impressed with the hanging system Ikea uses. In all of the Ikea kitchens we have seen online and in magazines, we never realized that the uppers are not screwed to the wall like traditional cabinets. Instead, they all hang from a metal rail that you install directly into the wall studs, which made hanging them ourselves (and keeping them aligned) a lot easier than other methods we have tried in the past.

The metal hanging rail comes as one 80″ long piece, but we only needed ours wide sufficient for the three 24″ cabinets. The instructions suggested a hacksaw, but our Dremel made the job much faster.

Determining how high to hang the rail took some planning. We are going to finish off our cabinets with the same crown molding that matches the rest of the house, so we had to account for the height that would add, as well as the fact that the cabinets attach to the rail a few inches down from the top of the cabinet.

Once I had my mark (which I made in the center of that back wall) I drew a line across the rest of the wall with my level.

But I soon realized that the line I marked was not quite helpful since it would be impossible to see behind the solid metal strip that the cabinets hang from. So I noted how much higher I needed to mark the wall to give myself a more visible reference point.

And so went the second line on my wall.

We also marked the studs so we were sure our screws would be going into something solid.

The wall is fairly flat (i.e. it does not bow or dip anywhere) so we could simply directly screw the metal rail into each of the studs. But according to the instructions, you might have to shim it if your wall is a little wavy.

With the rail securely hung on the wall, we slid in the bolts that each cabinet frame would hang from.

The cabinet frames are not quite heavy (at least without shelves or doors yet) so it was straightforward sufficient for one person to hoist them up and place them on the bolts (Sherry did one herself without any sweating or cursing). We secured them one at a time, so the first one to go up was that middle one, then I did the right one and Sherry did the left one.

Once they are resting on those two bolts, you add a metal clip and a nut – then tighten everything with a wrench. The clip allows you to adjust the placement slightly in case you need to level things a little. As you can see above, we rested a level on top to make sure each cabinet was straight as we went.

Once all three were up, we clamped them together at the edges so we could bolt all of them together to make one solid unit (this also eliminated any gaps between them). Once clamped, I drilled through one of the peg holes using a 3/16″ bit. NOTE: I realized afterwards that you should do the quite bottom and quite top hole, not the second one in – since those are used for the door hardware, but it was straightforward to correct – it simply meant doing it twice.

With a hole drilled through both cabinets, I used the supplied screws to make the connection tight.

The final step was snapping on the white plastic caps to cover the hanging hardware on the back of the cabinet.

So here are our three uppers sitting fairly on the wall. Certainly an improvement when it comes to storage & function, but not especially impressive looking since they still need some wood filler pieces on the sides and some crown on the top. Oh yeah and shelves and doors.

The doors were fairly straightforward to add, since the hardware that Ikea sells uses pressure to attach everything (there is no drilling holes or anything). The various screws can assist you adjust the placement, but our first one seemed to sit nicely against the frame without touching them at all.

What was not so pleasant? The color. It is harder to detect in photos than real life, but the Adel door front was looking a lot more cream than we hoped it would look (it is a few shades darker than the other slightly cream Ikea furniture we have). It looked especially yellow next to a Simply White scrap piece of baseboard – which is what all of our home’s trim/baseboards/doors are painted.

We did not expect it to match perfectly, but after some Googling (which we wish we’d done before our Ikea trip) we realized that Ikea sells a door style that people say matches Simply White nearly perfectly (what are the odds, they in fact shouted out our house’s exact trim/door color?!). Meanwhile the style we picked up is said to match Benjamin Moore’s Paper Mache (which is notably less white). Oops. We sadly overlooked the Lidingo door style since the picture on Ikea’s website makes it look a lot darker/yellower, but here is an example of how the matching paint swatches look SO DISTINCT than the photos of the doors online:

And while the Lidingo door style is not as clean-lined as the shaker style that we are typically most attracted to, it certainly fits the style of our house and looks fairly strong in other Ikea kitchens we have scoped online (we have consistently liked Dana’s over at HouseTweaking, so learning that she used them was certainly a selling point). But most selling of all was the fact that there was in fact a door style that is said to match all of our house’s doors and trim. I know I have said what are the odds already, but truly, what are the odds?!

So… we halted door installation and began planning a return trip to Ikea. Cue the eye twitch and flashbacks to highway closure traffic. But by some MIRACLE, it turns out my parents were visiting my sister and cousins in Northern Virginia on Tuesday and could swing by Ikea on their way home and get the new Lidingo doors for us. They are such an improvement over the Adels that we could not wait to hang them last night after we got the kids to bed. We even tucked the base cabinet in there for kicks, although it still needs to be secured to the wall to be officially installed (along with needing trim pieces on the sides, hardware, a counter, and a toe kick).

In fact, our to-do list is still fairly long in the cabinet department. But those little details are what makes it all come together, so we are psyched to dive into them.

It is certainly still more of a blank slate in here, so we are especially excited to bring in some wood tones to break up all the white – in the form of a butcher block counter among a few other items (you can read about those plans here).

We still need to return the doors and drawer fronts in that first color (we only unboxed one), but we will be driving through that area again in a few weeks so it is not too much of a pain to stop in and drop those off (he says while crossing all appendages that no unforeseen traffic issues arise). Also, here is how I feel about being able to do laundry at home again: