Built-In Cabinets for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLVII

Built-in cabinets

Among the more irritating tricks of the eHow.com contributors' trade was and remains the practice of ignoring the meaning of a question to make it easier for an ignorant freelancer to answer. That was, unfortunately, easy to get away with because the "content editors" who supposedly fact-checked posts typically  knew even less about the topics in question than the person writing the content. Today's nominee is one such contributor, a returnee by the name of Mark Morris. Morris decided that the "professional carpentry experience" he claimed allowed him to tell people "How to Use Stock Cabinets for Built-Ins" for HomeSteady.com. It apparently didn't...

Nothing says you cannot use stock cabinets to make a built-in unit; assuming of course that your built-ins fill an existing wall space floor to ceiling and side to side. It's much harder, and probably a waste of money, to actually build the cabinets into a new wall. Either way, Morris screwed the pooch when he tried to reword instructions for installing kitchen cabinets, at least in part because he ignored – or didn't understand – the "built-in" part.

Morris did a fairly decent job of explaining how to install a run of kitchen cabinets on a bare wall. Where his instructions went all wonky is his failure to think through the assignment. Here are a few hints that he wasn't thinking "built-in":

"Position the lower units against the wall on the floor... Place the countertop or worktop on top of the base units... Drive two 1 1/4-screws up through each cabinet's cleat into the bottom of the countertop."

Why did Morris think there's a countertop there? Apparently because he thought the question is about typical kitchen or bathroom cabinets, with deep base units, shallow wall units, and a countertop workspace. Except the question didn't say any of that... As for finishing touches, Morris said to,

"Measure the base of the cabinet unit and cut baseboard to fit each face... Measure the top of the cabinets and cut and install crown molding..." First, if there's a countertop, a base cabinet must have a toe kick. Second, if the cabinets are built in, there is only one face. Third, Morris forgot to use a filler strip at the end of the cabinet run to close up any spaces left between the cabinets and the walls. This is one more case of an ignorant eHow freelance contributor changing the meaning of a question to make it easier to "answer." Morris did nothing but tell people how to install cabinets on a wall, but in the process our four-time Dumbass of the Day decided to blow off the part of the question that stated, "built-ins."

We do not know, of course, if the OQ wanted floor-to-ceiling cabinets 12 inches deep, wanted cabinets on either side of a fireplace, or wanted the work area Morris envisioned. It's a safe bet, though, that by "built-ins" the question was not about slapping cabinets on a wall.

DDIY - CABINETS