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Kitchen Cabinet Install, Day 1

I want to begin by giving thanks God for those who helped me. Specifically, my friend Clement and his father-in-law, Mr. Gee for coming down from northern California. In addition, I want to thank Joel and Nate helping out on Saturday night. This job could not have been accomplished with so much help, support, perspectives and labor. All of these guys were an answer to prayer...

This is it! Showtime! The moment that I'd been waiting for all of these months, installing the kitchen cabinets. I did tons of reading, watching YouTube videos, asking people for advice and now it's time to actually do the install. I was really nervous because I'd never tried such a project and all of my knowledge was book knowledge, nothing experiential. But I think I had a good idea about the process (I pretty much followed the video tutorial featured on the EZ Level website) and the things to keep in mind.

We decided to use GRK fasteners with the star bit because they were the right length and to countersink them (pre-drill holes for them to prevent the wood from splitting). These proved to be awesome fasteners! The screws never stripped or broke or split the wood. They performed wonderfully! I highly recommend using these fasteners.


We started by leveling and hanging up ledger boards on the walls to support the wall cabinets while we put them in place. They served as a level guide for the wall cabinets to run along. We used the laser level to do this and many other tasks. I highly recommend utilizing a laser lever for such a project.

Foreground: Clement. Background: Mr. Gee
After we got the ledger boards up, we started fastening the cabinets together on the ground to make their installation up on the wall easier, which it turned out to be.

Clement marking out the hole on one of the wall
cabinets to access an outlet for the microwave.
By the mid-afternoon, we had one side of the kitchen wall cabinets up and proceeded to the opposite side. Always start in the corners.


Celebrating our accomplishments thus far.
Mr. Gee, Clement, Brian
Our first obstacle was the center cabinet run between the two wall corner cabinets.

Clement observing a 3/4" offset between the left corner
and the middle cabinet. I.e. they aren't lining up.
We discovered the left corner cabinet did not line up with the middle cabinet. However, the right hand side of the middle cabinet lined up fine with the right hand corner cabinet. We surmised this was because the wall was not straight. It was bowing in, making the wall concave. We considered a lot of different options but we weren't sure where to go from here. Leave it and let such a gap be exposed or possibly take down and reinstall the cabinets? Feeling tired at this point, we decided to pause and turn our attention elsewhere, being the installation of the EZ Level system.

EZ Level installations
Around 7pm and we decided to call it quits because it was our first day and we didn't want to burn ourselves out.

Overall, we felt good about our progress.


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