Kitchen unit fitting help

[Job and Knock]

has anyone used those long rails for hanging wall units before? same profile as the standard clips but obviously longer

Certainly have. Started using them about 10 years back - used to get them from Woodfit in Chorley. These days even IKEA sell them (I'm told). As Stevie says you need to notch out for tham, but its a minute's work with the jigsaw. Great for dealing with manky masonry and crappy stud walls

reakon ill price a laser into the next fit too.

You've no idea how much easier a self-levelling laser makes things until you get one

Anybody remember the old Hygena QA kitchens from the 60s?

Sadly, yes. I used to live in a house with them

They knock apart easy for rip-out, though

[joinerjohn]

Biggest problem for me personally are bowed walls and walls that just ain't plumb. Fitted a kitchen once that had a run of units ending in a tall unit for built in fridge and freezer. On the run the wall was bowed (a straight edge run along it touched in the middle but was over an inch out at either end) When it came to putting up the tall unit, it was touching the wall at the bottom, but was out from the wall by about an inch (unit was plumb, wall sadly wasn't ) Couldn't scribe the unit to the wall either as it would have gone back too far. Ended up having to make the end panels out of some 800mm wide mfc, just so I could scribe it to the wall. Nowadays it's all clad on end panels which come wider than the cabinet ends and can be scribed easily. Once fitted a kitchen in an extension. The builder had got the floor levels wrong. The floor dropped 100mm over the 3 metre length of the extension. Sadly he wasn't prepared to dig it up and re-do, as he'd also have had to replace the external door at the end. Worse still the washing machine was right at the high end of the kitchen, so couldn't drop the units much to compensate either. (should have put the kitchen in on a slope)

[Job and Knock]

The problem with marking datums is that they should only be used as a guide to help level up units quickly, past that, each unit should be checked as it's installed

I agree with what you say CR, but they are a useful way to check if you have a high area in the floor and to generally gauge if the units are running out for whatever reason. I possibly didn't make clear that you still need to check each and every unit both individually and as part of a line. Sorry

[royaloakcarpentry]

This is where proper surveying and marking out comes into play. My over the top marking and setting out even shows if a cabinet is out of square, as I also plumb down where the edge of the back of each unit falls and mark the wall.

Just habit formed from when I fitted the hand made bespoke kitchens where there were no infill panels, plinth boxes had to be scribed to the floor and there was no caulking allowed. All scribes had to be bang on.

I have worked with people who just whack a datum around, and level each unit as they go and it takes a lot longer to fit the kitchen than marking and setting out properly.

Nothing worse than seeing a new kitchen where the work top overhang is 40mm one end and 38mm at the other. U shaped runs out of parallel and L shaped runs out of square. Especially when the floor tiles or patterned soft floor covering goes down.

[steviejoiner74]

This is where proper surveying and marking out comes into play. My over the top marking and setting out even shows if a cabinet is out of square, as I also plumb down where the edge of the back of each unit falls and mark the wall.

Just habit formed from when I fitted the hand made bespoke kitchens where there were no infill panels, plinth boxes had to be scribed to the floor and there was no caulking allowed. All scribes had to be bang on.

I have worked with people who just whack a datum around, and level each unit as they go and it takes a lot longer to fit the kitchen than marking and setting out properly.

Nothing worse than seeing a new kitchen where the work top overhang is 40mm one end and 38mm at the other. U shaped runs out of parallel and L shaped runs out of square. Especially when the floor tiles or patterned soft floor covering goes down.

You must have sh*t hot eyesight if you can see a worktop run 2mm off over 3m

[royaloakcarpentry]

Measure it............not always about the eye it is about knowing that you could have spent 5 minutes longer to scribe the worktop or units properly. 2mm may as well be 25mm when you have worked with +/-0mm on projects.

Even 2mm out of square sticks out like a sore thumb if the unit run is long enough and the tile line is close enough to a free standing appliance or plinth.

No excuse for it from people who charge to do the work.

[steviejoiner74]

Realistically the worktop ain't butting up to a wall with no sealant/upstanding or tile. So in the case of 2mm it's easily balanced out to avoid a discrepancy the human eye will see.
There ain't such a thing as +/- to 0mm on a kitchen fit or any building work,that's simply impossible to work to that sort of tolerance. You're tools don't measure to that sort of accuracy over a distance for a start!!
Unless you have a spirit level or laser with a 100% accuracy level......and eyesight to match!!

[royaloakcarpentry]

There is.......been on many a designer job with nil tolerance on setting out, but that is getting onto another topic.

Kitchen wise if you have a bespoke hand made one with nil infills and the frame is to be scribed exactly then that is nil tolerance. 2mm tolerance would mean caulk! If you have a 2M plinth base and scribe and level it 3mm out, then that would throw the cabinet out and corner when sitting it on top, so the tolerance has to be nil.

[joinerjohn]

U shaped runs out of parallel and L shaped runs out of square. Especially when the floor tiles or patterned soft floor covering goes down.

Ahh but what if the walls for a u run are a country mile out of parallel, or the corner is 95 degrees? (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration), but once fitted roof trusses on a new terraced house where the brickies had extended one wall by an extra brick, throwing everything out. This was just the roof. Dunno what the kitchen fitter had to do to get over the out of square corner internally?

Out of square corners are going to show up though, whether it's through the flooring or the worktop. You can't make a silk purse out of a pigs ear (but you can do your best to disguise it)

[steviejoiner74]

That's the reality of the building trade,very rarely are rooms/building bang on for square or plumb.
This is where making things eye sweet instead of 100% plumb or level come in to play.
The materials we use aren't 100% bang on straight either.

[Gadget]

If it's 'pleasing to the eye' is my motto!

[royaloakcarpentry]

Joinerjohn.......that is surveying before the job and means you buy wider worktops if needed.

I know what you mean about roofing. We put a trussed roof on a development of flats and could see just by eye that the building was well out of square. Site Manager was adamant it was all spot on. 6" soffit on 3 sides of the building and the 4th side had 6" increasing to 8" pmsl.

Steviejoiner74......you are talking about buildings, now which is far different from a kitchen. You are not fitting units to a corner and having one 2mm out of plumb one way and the other 1mm out the other way, leaving a gap up the corner post and then telling the client " well, that is building work, nothing is within +/-0mm!" What about when you do work that you know is then going to be trimmed out and a shadow gap formed, are you happy with 10mm shadow at the top of a reveal and 8mm at the bottom. I doubt it.

Been on many a job with big budgets for each room where work has to be bang on. Levelling floors up by 2mm so that the pile of the bedroom carpet when brushed vertical will be flush with the top of the marble on the floor in the en suite. Plus such other mind numbing fussiness. Moving doors so that when open 90 degrees to the frame they line up with the centre hinge knuckle of another door! Checked by laser too lol.

[joinerjohn]

Joinerjohn.......that is surveying before the job and means you buy wider worktops if needed.

Still can't work out exactly how you could create a u shaped kitchen that looked parallel in a space that wasn't parallel to start with. Unless you do something to the walls, then somethings either going to look odd/ out. even with wider worktops, it could be noticeable that the walls were out (worktop would be narrower at one end)

[Job and Knock]

I have worked with people who just whack a datum around, and level each unit as they go and it takes a lot longer to fit the kitchen than marking and setting out properly.

Unfortunately ROC I'm not fully with you there. Of course you need to set out the positions of individual cabinets and not trust to them being made exactly to drawing (or for that matter the drawings being correct, they rarely are), however that datum line is all important to me because I am often starting out without a finished floor level, either. These days I'm setting out bars or runs of cabinetry in shops where end to end might be 15 or 20 metres, sometimes more, often round one or more corners. You need a starting point, more particularly when the floor goes in after the cabinetry (about half the time), and that start point is therefore the horizontal datum line, generally with an agreed vertical plumb point. As to zero tolerance, I'd love to meet the brickie or plasterer who can work to those tolerances because I've never worked on a building new or old built as accurately as that. When you are working on the bench in interior fit it used to be standard practice to allow a small scribing margin for the fitters. The fit-outs with the biggest problems are always the ones where someone has gone all theroretical on us and given us zero tolerances because they don't understand that real world installation isn't theory. My take on it is that my job is not only to get it in, but also to make it look right - if at all possible I'll put it in per the drawings, but more often than not for me it's a case of making it look right rather than being dead right, i.e. ensuring even shadow gaps, lining-up handles, door hinges, etc, etc. Very rarely are there any comments made about on the fly changes forced on us - but where they are done it is always with client approval so there hopefully shouldn't be. I don't think I'd want to work with a designer or architect so inflexible and infallible that his or her designs were "perfect"

That's the reality of the building trade,very rarely are rooms/building bang on for square or plumb.
This is where making things eye sweet instead of 100% plumb or level come in to play. The materials we use aren't 100% bang on straight either.

Now that's the reality I work in, especially in older buildings! as with everything, though, the devil is in the detail

[steviejoiner74]

Got to 100% agree with joinerjohn and job and knock for their 2 last posts,sorry ROC.