I am handy but not a professional carpenter. I am installing a kitchen in an old building. I have a corner cabinet to hang and the corner is far from being square. What is the best way to handle this situation?
A high-performance single-family home builder shares tips from his early experience with two apartment buildings.
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Replies
Ron
Is this upper or lower?
Cabinets to either side attaching to it?
More or less than a 90 degree corner?
The professional way is to make it work w/o calling attention to the out of whackness of the building. Of course, there's variations either way from perfect.
Shims, fill strips, cutting into the wall (w/o compromising the energy seal) planing, trim, etc are the usual tools of choice.
So is plastering up the wall, filling in voids and the use of a plaster bead (a guide that your trowel or knife rides on to apply a coat of filler that goes from nothing to something thicker). This gives you an ability to even up an out of whack area-hollow-out of plumb with plaster or joint compound instead of changing the framing.
If you do this or any of the above, care must be taken to figure out how this will effect cabinets further down the line.
this is an upper cabinet. the corner must be more than 90 degrees for when flat on one wall there is a gap on other end of cabinet. I will be attaching a cabinet. I will take a square to corner for it may just be too much spackling in corner that has caused this. Thank you for your imput. Much appreciated!
It's perfectly fine to dig out the plaster a bit behind the cabinet, to get it to sit square and flat. Just try not to go all the way through an exterior wall.
A prior owner had sheetrocked over original sheetrock. It would take quite a bit to reach exterior wall.
Ron
Split the difference might also be considered a key word in hanging cabs. Again though-you need to think ahead OR gang them together and lift up and brace ......... or put up on "stands" close to the ht. you want them, then join them together. Now you've got the complete or near complete "unit" that needs mounting. This helps you to decide whether to shim out on this wall or that.
One big gap can be made to work by splitting the gap in half-on each side of the run.
Then there's planing the back corners of cabs if it's available-to get it closer to the wall.
Sometimes the corner is only bad in the middle, top and bottom are pretty square. I use a level and squares (adjoined to longer straight edges to get an idea. Also, the line lasers that project a square line vericle really help to see what's up. If you have one-fine-but no need to buy, there's manual aids like above that'll give you the same result.
Thank you all for the helpful ideas. I will see what I can do. Busy this weekend but will work on it the following.