If you are planning on installing kitchen cabinets on your own without having a professional install them for you, then you are going to need to know some of the tricks of the trade. I will be glad to give you some of the information that you will need to get the job done right.

To begin with, before you even take the cabinets out of their boxes, you will want to draw out the design or layout on your walls, making sure that all of the cabinets are going to fit in the space provided. Your kitchen cabinet installation depends on becoming familiar with the layout of your new kitchen. Once you have established that you have all of the cabinets for your design, and they are going to fit your layout, then you can go ahead take the cabinets out of the boxes. A lot of times, the manufacturer will not take a cabinet back that is wrong if it has been removed from the original boxing, so be certain that they are correct. If by chance the cabinet has been damaged during shipment, it will be evident from the boxing that it was damaged during transport. If you happen to see that the box is damaged, carefully inspect the cabinet for any damage as well by taking it out of the box and looking it over. It is always best to be home when the cabinets are delivered so you can inspect the boxes as they are being off loaded from the truck.

Next up in the process of installing kitchen cabinets is removing the doors and interior shelves of the wall cabinet. Be careful not to lose any of the screws or shelf clips, and I suggest that you place them in a container and set them aside until it is time to put the shelves and doors back on the cabinets.

Once you have the first cabinet in place and it is level and plumb, fasten the adjoining cabinet to it by clamping the face frames together using eight inch clamps with rubber pads to protect the wood. Carefully line up the faces of the adjoining cabinets, and starting at the bottom of the cabinets, drill an 11/64" countersunk hole into the adjoining face frame, and use a two and a half inch cabinet screw to fasten the two cabinet face frames together. Work your way up the cabinets, installing at least three of the screws into the face frames, making sure that the faces are flush with each other. You may find that you will have to shim a little here and there to line them up.

Here is another thing to look at when you are installing kitchen cabinets; The straightness of the wall. If the wall has a hump or a dip in it as you proceed down the run of the cabinets, then shim accordingly to get the cabinets in a straight line. This comes into play when you go to install any crown moldings at the top of the wall cabinets. If the cabinets are not straight with each other, then you are going to have a difficult time installing the moldings.