Cabinet Installation – Dealing With Corners

Chances are if you are planning on completing a kitchen cabinet installation, you will encounter at least one corner. Dealing with corners can be a bit tricky if you do not follow a certain sequence. I always start installing cabinets working from the corner out. However if you simply install the corner cabinet first, in most situations you will eventually encounter problems installing subsequent cabinets.

The chances are good that if the cabinets are to be installed against a wall, that either the cabinets or the walls are not at precisely the same angle. If you simply attach the corner cabinet first and the walls were built at less than a 90 degree angle to each other (or even irregularities in the walls themselves), then the remainder of the cabinets will not sit flush with each other. For this reason, I attach as many cabinets as possible to adjacent cabinets and then in turn to the corner cabinet before any cabinets are permanently attached to the wall. This way the best position of the corner cabinets and the attached runs of cabinets may be determined, before screwing then to the wall.

When attaching to the wall make sure that you fill any gaps at the point of attachment with shims. This will ensure that the cabinets will remain plumb when screwing to the studs. Always check to make sure the cabinets remain plumb and level throughout the installation process. A little care taken here will could save the much aggravation and time.

Paul Eden is a mechanical engineer who enjoys home improvement projects. He has also recently written about best earphones and DVD VCR Recorders.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Eden

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Fantastic Kitchen Remodeling Ideas – Which Style is Right For You?

The kitchen is the heart of the house, so its design is important. It’s more than just the place to keep your food; it’s where folks and friends get together. If the heart of your home isn’t what you want it to be, a remodeling project could really help. You can remodel your kitchen and find just the right style that is really You.

You can make your kitchen a warm and welcoming place for the family to gather. You can do anything imaginable with your kitchen, but in case your imagination is stalled on the tracks, here are some classic ideas that always add just the right touch.

The Warmth and Comfort of the Traditional Style

Tired of tacky linoleum and plain white tiles that remind you of a 1950’s TV show? A soulless room decor can leave you feeling pretty uninspired. The traditional decor is meant to give a room a warm, comfortable feeling. What makes the traditional style so cozy and attractive is wood. Wood gives any place a homey feel. Most designs use oak, and the furniture is modeled after the antique shaker style. The cabinets are built-in, and there are drawers where you can put everything you need.

Are You Ready For The Country?

Why not go one step further with a country style design. The country decor gives your kitchen a distinctly homey feel. This is one of the most popular styles chosen for remodeling projects. Like the traditional decor, a country design should be woody and warm. It is simpler than the traditional, however, and uses more subtle colors. There are design effects like flowers, fruits and knick-knacks. Most country kitchens have natural wood floors.

The idea is coziness and comfort. The country kitchen should be a place where you want to sit a spell and chat with friends. You can choose between the French country, American country or English country decor. All three have their slightly different flavors.

Enough of The Old Style… Let’s Head For the Future

Some folks prefer a contemporary design to the traditional or country. This modern style is fully up-to-date. Are you ready for the future? Contemporary design uses a sleek style. There are minimal cabinets and design features. The materials are man-made from the 20th century, including plywood, glass, steel and plastic.

The contemporary decor is meant to be beautiful, but also utilitarian. Unlike older styles, it is meant to be user-friendly, and to have all the most modern conveniences. It is also meant to be environmentally-friendly. With its emphasis on efficiency, the contemporary kitchen is made with a green design. Don’t take that literally; you won’t have lime green cabinets staring at you every time you reach for the pepper; it means the design is ecological as well as economical.

If you are thinking about kitchen remodeling, first decide what style suits you. There are traditional styles, as well as contemporary styles and everything in between. Check out some kitchen remodeling ideas and decide what is best for you.

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Cost Savings Tips on Remodeling Your Kitchen Starting With Your Kitchen Cabinets

Kitchen design and remodeling your kitchen can be a complex work of art. With so many options to choose from and so many elements to consider, the task of creating a space to please both the eye and the cook is not always easy. Out of a good kitchen design comes greatness. It is the ability to skillfully combine form and function, art and mechanics, logic and aesthetics into one dazzling room. It also demands how to utilize this space by incorporating homeowner’s priorities into a functional work place.

Whether you’re planning to sell or stay in your home for years to come,the final outcome of your kitchen can be an expensive investment, but not necessarily all the time. There are ways to cut your cost by more than half. Alternatives to spending thousands of dollars and waiting months to have your kitchen upgraded. One such way is to invest in ready to install kitchen cabinets.

Stock cabinets can be bought at any kitchen cabinet manufacturer or distributor. Leading distributors have showrooms where you can view hundreds of designs and patterns in many colors and surfaces, and they also offer design planning services and installation as well. Although the designs of ready to install or prefabricated cabinets may not stack up against the uniqueness of custom made ones, there are certainly advantages to them.

Some of these advantages are the ability for you to shop around and inspect the cabinets before purchasing. At this stage, you can identify any flaws or poor workmanship, calculate dimensions, choose your patterns and colors and consult with on site experts on kitchen design. Another main advantage is, manufacturers have highly sophisticated machinery for mass production. Their quality assurance puts the cabinets through high tolerance stress tests to ensure proper workmanship and durability. By doing this they provide consistency to the quality of the product, so you can shop with peace of mind.

Have a professional company come in and measure your kitchen for proper dimensions. Go to their showrooms and inspect the product. Once the decision has been made and installation takes place, you have very little recourse to rectify mistakes.

Refacing your kitchen cabinets is another great alternative. There are many businesses set up to do the job easy and affordable. They will come out to your home, get dimensions of your kitchen cabinets and build the cabinet door fronts and draw fronts. They will also incorporate any additional features you would like, such as sliding draws or roll out shelves to name a few. Once production is done on your new doors and draw fronts, installation takes place in a day without all the mess that can occur with a complete kitchen renovation. Veneers are a very popular way of refacing your cabinets. They are available as an adhesive product. If you’re the kind of person that likes the DIY kind of projects, you can buy the veneers and install them yourself saving on labor cost. The veneers are heat applied, so you may have to invest in a heating tool to do this. You can pick this up at any hardware supplies store. Some experts suggest that a hot clothing iron can do the job just as good.

Painting your kitchen cabinets offer another good cost savings option. It is a quick, inexpensive way to give your cabinets an upgrade. Wood veneers, solid wood and metal surfaces take paint well, but plastic laminates or thinner melamine plastic covered surfaces do not. They unfortunately cannot be painted, because paint does not bond well to them. Satin enamel paint is probably your best choice as it covers well and is easy to clean. Remove all doors and empty out all draws before painting anything. It just makes painting them so much easier. Remember to remove all hinges, cabinet knobs and pulls as well, and label everything. This way you’ll know which items belong to each door and draw and your paint application would look professional. You don’t want to see paint on the hinges and knobs from a lazy approach to painting your cabinets.

Your kitchen is at the fore front of your house. Your eyes are immediately drawn to this space so it needs to look its best. Home buyers will pay top dollar for homes with a modern and functional kitchen. It is one of the best selling attributes of your home. Whether you decide to have your kitchen cabinets custom made, or you decided to buy ready to install cabinets or just want to give them face lift by having them refaced or painted, the investment is worth it every time.

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