Many of you have asked for tips and tricks to make installing Ikea kitchen cabinets go more smoothly. And the good news is that after installing three of them in a little over a year and a half (!!!), we have learned A TON about how to make things a little easier and help you end up with a better result. So settle in, I’ve got twenty tools & tips that can make all the difference.
First off, we like Ikea cabinets and have personally installed them in five rooms: our laundry room & bonus room at home, our beach house kitchen, and now these two duplex kitchens. They are smartly made, very durable, and they have a great 25-year warranty and a great price tag (often thousands cheaper than other options). They also come with many thoughtful features like soft close drawers that come standard and tons of customization options. So yeah, some Ikea furniture is known for feeling a little cheap and wobbly, but that has not been our experience with their cabinets AT ALL.
Ok, but back to the point of this post – tips and tools to make your Ikea cabinet install easier. Some of the tools I’m listing here are absolutely necessary and some are optional (they’ll just make the process easier, faster, and less frustrating). And as you read through this list, I think you’ll also get a pretty good sense of the steps (and curveballs) involved too, which I hope will help as well.
Make Your Own Kitchen Island With Storage
I’ll include a short bulleted list of everything at the end of the post too, that way you can use it as a tool checklist. But let’s just get right into it.
Before you build anything, you’ll want to take time to inventory and organize all of your boxes. We had over 200 boxes (!!!) delivered for our two duplex kitchens, so it helped to sort everything into piles beforehand.
Boxes over here, Maximera drawers over there, all of our cabinet fronts somewhere else, etc.) but you may find it helpful to sort yours by cabinet instead (ex: the box, drawer, hinges, and front for one cabinet all together in one pile – this is how Ikea breaks them up your order form). Either way you do it, this sorting process will help you identify any missing pieces and also make it faster once you start building.
Creating A Kitchen Island Using Ikea Base Cabinets
This combo gets a lot of use in this install (especially the power driver/drill) – but they’re needed first to construct your cabinet boxes (
Wrenches, you don’t use them AT ALL during a typical kitchen installation! So don’t worry about having lots of specialty drill bits. You just need a normal Phillips head to screw these puppies together.
You’ll also need a hammer handy to nail the MDF backings onto the cabinet backs. It may also be useful if you need to tap any anchors into your drywall when it comes time to hang your cabinets.
Sektion Assembly Kit For Kitchen Island
Having one of these on your drill can save you a lot of frustration while building your cabinets and drawers. You can buy one separately for about $2 or it often comes included in drill/driver sets like ours. It’ll magnetize your drill bits, meaning many of the screws that Ikea provides will stick to your drill handsfree (thanks to the magic of magnets). We found this VERY helpful when trying to screw into small spots that were too tight for our fingertips (we couldn’t reach in and hold the screw steady, so having a magnetized drill bit that held it for us was key).
The next several tools are needed for attaching your cabinets to the wall. Whether you’re doing upper or lower cabinets, Ikea’s system uses a metal track (called the Sektion suspension rail) that you attach to your wall and then the cabinet boxes hang from these. The rail system is extremely handy because if you make sure the rail is level, your cabinets all hang from that and are guaranteed to be level! I know, it’s GREAT. The only time I
For now, just know the measuring tape will be useful in determining exactly where in your kitchen you’re placing your cabinets – both side-to-side on each wall, and how high the rails need to be hung (Ikea provides guides for this in
Installing Ikea Kitchen Cabinets
Once you know where each run of cabinets is going, you’ll need to cut your metal suspension rails to size. The rails are sold in 7 foot lengths, but if you only have 4 feet of cabinetry in one area – you only want 4 feet of rail.
You can cut these by hand with a hacksaw, but we find it much faster to use our Dremel Multi-Max with a metal cutting blade.
I typically mark my cut on a piece of painters tape and cut across the open top of one of our cabinet boxes (with a piece of cardboard to protect the cabinet underneath).
An Honest In Depth Review Of Our Ikea Kitchen
You want to screw the rail into at least a few studs in your wall for maximum hold. So it’s smart to use a stud finder to locate and mark the studs that fall within the area you’re hanging the rail – that way you can be sure to go into them and get a nice firm hold. Since studs are typically 1.5″ thick, I like to mark the full width that my stud finder indicates, since you may not know exactly where the holes on the
Once I know where my studs are, I hold my cut-to-size metal rail and, with a medium sized level (like this 24″ level) held against it, I mark the top line of my rail AND where the holes line up with my studs. I suggest amedium sized level for this just because they’re easier to wrangle during this step.
I also mark a few additional holes where I’ll use screws paired with anchors. I believe Ikea suggests at least having a screw every 12″ inches – but for short sections like this, I like to make sure I hit at least 2 studs and then have a screw at either end of the rail that goes into an anchor.
Considering An Ikea Kitchen Remodel
Into studs. They’re easy to drive, they hold really tight, and they include the star-head bit you need for them. We have tried other, cheaper “cabinet screws” and the heads kept breaking off. It was MADDENING.
We also like to have some anchors on hand too, like these E-Z Ancor packs that come with screws, for those additional support screws that we add.
One of the biggest challenges we’ve found in this process is getting things level. Just because you’ve hung your rail level on the wall doesn’t prevent things like slopes in your floor or bows in your wall from chucking some additional curveballs in your direction. So your best defenses are a lot of patience and a nice long level, like this 4ft level we bought specifically for this task (after learning that it’s a lot harder to use a smaller level to solve these issues).
How To Make A Kitchen Island Out Of Base Cabinets
Your medium sized level will help with the process as well (especially in checking that each individual cabinet is level front-to-back) but you’ll want something bigger to check longer spans of cabinets. You could purchase an even longer level if you wanted, but they can start to get pricey, so we found a 4 foot long level to be sufficient, especially for checking across the gaps that you’ll leave for appliances like a 30″ stove or a standard 24″ dishwasher.
A lot of level issues can be corrected by twisting the adjustable plastic feet that come with your base cabinets, or by adjusting the placement of your metal rail. But if you’re dealing with bows in your wall (which you can find by placing your long level against it) you’ll want to have some wood shims on hand to place behind the metal rail. In these old houses, we had to use quite a few in a couple of places!
When it comes time to install your sink base cabinet, you’ll need to make some holes for your plumbing. For smaller pipes like your water supply
Ikea Kitchen Island Install
You can just drill holes using a large drill bit (we used the 3/4″ bit in this set). But for things like your large drain pipe, you’ll either need to buy a larger hole bit or break out a jigsaw. Even though we don’t get the cleanest cut with it, the jigsaw gives us a little more wiggle room when placing the cabinet (since the drain pipe isn’t flexible like the supply lines) and we can also use it for other cuts like for exposing the outlets along the wall (the one below powers the garbage disposal under the sink).
Just be sure to make careful measurements before you cut. We usually put a layer of painters tape around the area we’re cutting. It allows us to mark our cut without marking the cabinet, plus the tape helps keep the white finish from cracking off. Either way, this stuff will all be hidden under the sink so it
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