Hanging Cabinets for Dummies

Cabinet screws

After more then 1600 DotD nominations, some of the names our staffers turn up for the morning meeting look familiar. Then again, some of them look familiar because we just featured that particular dummy a few days earlier. Thanks to Leaf Group's "follow-on" program, though, a staffer came across a particularly stupid post by someone we'd featured just a couple of days ago. She's Cadence Johansen, back to pretend she knows "How to Mount Kitchen a Wall Cabinet"¹ for HomeSteady.com.

Johansen's instructions are so incomplete that we actually looked at the original version on archive.org to make certain Leaf didn't leave out a few steps when they ported her post over from eHow.com. Nope: it's all Cadence's fault.

Johansen's assumption is that you're hanging kitchen cabinets, not necessarily a safe assumption but what the heck. So her instructions comprise the following four steps:

1. "Measure from the floor up... Typically this is 54 inches." – We'll buy that.
2. "Mark a line on the wall where your bottom cabinets should end... find the studs and mark where they are..." – OK, we guess, other than the clumsiness of "your bottom cabinets should end."
3. "Install a ledger board under your marked line..." – Again, pretty much OK, though "under your... line" is sort of ambiguous.
4. "Remove all of the doors of the cabinet for an easier installation. You may have to use shims to make the cabinet level. Be sure to use your level when hanging. Once the cabinet is securely in place you can replace the doors." – Ugh.

For starters, you don't use shims to level the cabinets, that's what the ledger is for: you use shims to make certain the cabinets are plumb (a word Johansen probably doesn't know).

But what is more interesting is that the OQ wanted to know how to mount a wall cabinet. All Cadence did was explain how to place it on the wall. She does not mention screws at all, only vaguely referring to how said cabinet might be mounted:

"Wall cabinets are too heavy to mount without a stud..."

...which, when you come right down to it, might have been a sexist way of saying you need an assistant. But the truth is that you hang wall cabinets with specially-designed screws with an oversized head for added strength. Then you connect the face frames with cabinet screws, which have tiny heads to make them less noticeable.
Cadence listed "screws" as something you'd need, but that is the only place in her post where screws are mentioned. And that, dear reader, is why Johansen is our Dumbass of the Day. Again.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_5542639_mount-wall-cabinet.html

copyright © 2019-2022 scmrak

DD - CABINETS