Fixing cheap cabinets - how would you do this?

[FS7]

I thought I would buy some inexpensive cabinets to hang in the laundry room. I bought some white cheapies at Home Depot, and the build quality (predictably) isn't great. When you buy the cheapest available, you get the cheapest available, at least in terms of carcass construction.

I wasn't going for anything super fancy, so I just hung a 1x2 on the wall (screwed into the studs) and then used cabinet screws through the backs of the two cabinets to secure those to the studs. They are solid, but since the carcasses are both slightly twisted, they don't line up. The face frame has dadoes to accept the sides, and the back has a rabbet to accept the sides. None of them particularly line up well top and bottom, and are off anywhere between 1/32" and 3/32". Screwing the two cabinets together after lining up the face frame would result in gaps at the bottom and the cabinet twisted (not fully butting up against the wall and/or not fully seated on the 1x2 support).

I did this myself without assistance, so I put them both on the wall one at a time. What this ended up meaning is that one cabinet sits about 1/8" higher than the other. I "solved" this by adding filler strips - one on the bottom of the right cabinet and one on the top of the left - painted to match. The doors are different heights (even after adjusting the hinges fully) but it doesn't look too bad. If the builder had hung them, I'm sure it would have been good enough for them.

Naturally, it bugs me every time I walk by, so I want to fix them. I can try to line up the face frames and screw them together and re-hang them, which would not require any additional materials. It would require me to take them down, though. I can simply re-drill hinge holes and re-hang the doors so they line up, even if the carcasses don't (they look like they do). Inside the doors, the bottom of the cabinets don't line up, but you'd need to look closely to see that.

What I'm thinking of doing is building an entirely new face frame, which would cover the filler strips (they don't look perfect) and also give me an extra 3/4" of cabinet depth. I'd also like to put crown on the top of the cabinets, and there is very little space to do that now (it's effectively impossible). I have 1.5" inch gaps on both sides as well, which could be covered and thus the cabinets would be wall-to-wall in the laundry room.

[jlanciani]

When you put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig. Sounds to me like it is bugging you enough to fix it right; either take them down and rehang them properly or replace them altogether with something that matches the quality that you want to see. As far as cheap cabinets go, the basic frameless cabinets from IKEA are actually of surprisingly decent quality for the price. They are especially well suited for laundry rooms and other secondary storage needs.

[Admiral]

When you put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig. 

Which is why I built my own.  Agree its best to remove them and try and rework if you don't want to replace, but don't get high expectations.

[handi]

I have built many thousands of cabinet boxes over the years, including two full kitchen remodels in my own home. Squaring up the boxes should not be too difficult, but you simply cannot hang (or set) un-square boxes. 

The sides are just rectangles. Unless they are cut out of square, those are reusable.
The sides should be either rabbeted to accept a back or better yet, dadoed for the back to slip in. The back is what holds the Box square so this is the crucial part.

I prefer to cut the bottom full depth and the top to the Dado in back. Assemble the top and bottoms to the sides, and as long as the back is cut square, sliding it into place will square up the whole box. 

Doing it the above way, the back sets onto the bottom of the cabinet and snug within the dados. A couple of screws or even nails through the back into the edge of the top locks it in place.

I also prefer to hang my cabinets on a French cleat. I set the Dado for the back 3/4” in so that I can add a cleat across the top that is one half of the French cleat. As long as you hang the other half level to the wall, the box will hang properly.

[Stwood_]

When you put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig. Sounds to me like it is bugging you enough to fix it right; either take them down and rehang them properly or replace them altogether with something that matches the quality that you want to see.

10-4

[WoodTinker]

I have built many thousands of cabinet boxes over the years, including two full kitchen remodels in my own home. Squaring up the boxes should not be too difficult, but you simply cannot hang (or set) un-square boxes. 

The sides are just rectangles. Unless they are cut out of square, those are reusable.
The sides should be either rabbeted to accept a back or better yet, dadoed for the back to slip in. The back is what holds the Box square so this is the crucial part.

I prefer to cut the bottom full depth and the top to the Dado in back. Assemble the top and bottoms to the sides, and as long as the back is cut square, sliding it into place will square up the whole box. 

Doing it the above way, the back sets onto the bottom of the cabinet and snug within the dados. A couple of screws or even nails through the back into the edge of the top locks it in place.

I also prefer to hang my cabinets on a French cleat. I set the Dado for the back 3/4” in so that I can add a cleat across the top that is one half of the French cleat. As long as you hang the other half level to the wall, the box will hang properly.

+1 for the French Cleat

[jteneyck]

I haven't used all that many factory made cabinets, but of the ones I have used none of them were very far out of square, not enough that they couldn't be pulled into alignment when the face frames were clamped then screwed together.   I don't remember any problems with unequal length parts, either.  I do remember some doors being hung poorly and even some out of square which made it difficult to get them aligned well enough that they looked right.   

The biggest problems I've had hanging cabinets is walls not being plumb and if you try to screw a cabinet against an out of plumb wall it will twist for sure.  Of course, no wall is really plumb, nor truly flat, so you have to shim and sometimes even cut into the drywall to get the cabinets aligned without wracking the cabinets.  

John

[rwe2156]

They shouldn't be that out of whack I think its the installation process. 

Set the bottoms on a level cleat clamp together and you should ok.

[FS7]

They shouldn't be that out of whack I think its the installation process. 

Set the bottoms on a level cleat clamp together and you should ok.

I checked again and they actually are that far out of whack.

The face frame is 30" tall. The sides are 30" tall. The back is 30" tall.

The sides go into dadoes on the face frame, and the back is rabbeted to accept them. The situation I'm encountering is that if the face frame is at 0", maybe one of the sides starts at 0.125". The back, on the other hand, might be at -0.125". It's not like the side is just a bit high - it's twisted. I tried taking down the cabinets and clamping them together, and that doesn't seem to help much. Clamping them together at the face frame and screwing them together is wonderful, except the backs aren't even remotely close after that and the stresses from installation would be painful.

Also, the back wall isn't flat. Poor cabinet construction, average home construction. I guess I could have taken all of them out of the boxes first to check for this, but I didn't.

I'm just going to build a new face frame and scribe it to the wall. I think that's really the best I can do. I won't buy these cabinets again, I can tell you that. I should have just made my own.

[FS7]

Finally got around to doing this. The cabinets, as mentioned, were twisted to the point of being "unfixable" by traditional cabinet mounting standards.

I built a new face frame and installed that directly over the old one. The brad holes are not as clean as I'd like, but it is a laundry room cabinet so I can't complain too much. 

In addition to the previous problems, I found that the walls are not square (they narrow at the top, about 1/8" over the 33" from bottom to top). Also, the Hampton Bay rails and stiles were not square - when leveling the face frame for installation, I realized it didn't line up perfectly with the existing cabinets. This is because all of the angles are about 89 degrees, give or take. Not huge, but enough to notice when you put something that's actually 90 degrees over top of it.

None of that is visible when the doors are closed, and I get an extra 3/4" of depth out of it, so that's nice at least. I added some crown on top too.

Still blows my mind what passes for retail quality these days.