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How to Seamlessly Install an Island Cabinet on an Uneven Floor

Take pride in your scribes

By Rain Noe - June 7, 2016

in Reference

If only the real world was like CAD world, where everything is perfectly flat, level, square and plumb. During my very first job as an industrial designer, my boss sent me to a job site to oversee the installation of a built-in. I had naively thought that the tradesmen would just drop the piece in and be done with it. Instead I learned that the real world is certainly not CAD world, nor table-saw-square world.

Over the next few hours I was impressed to see the tradesmen break out a variety of shimming, scribing and covering tricks to get the thing installed perfectly flush all around. Being the professionals that they were, their labor installing the finished product was invisible, leaving no indication that they had just cleverly joined a perfectly finished object with a very imperfect environment.

Nathan Hartman of Kerf Design is one such professional, and here he demonstrates and explains how to install a freestanding island cabinet on an imperfect floor while maintaining a seamless join:

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Brian Hackett

8 years ago

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Nevermind, i see the toe-kick frame is not flush to the floor.

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Brian Hackett

8 years ago

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Thanks! Just in time for a bar install I'll be doing shortly. I don't understand the prupose for the toe-kick cover, though. Any idea?

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Scott Brown

8 years ago

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I couldn't count the number of cabinets & builtins i've installed, but still find this fascinating to watch.

Across all eras of construction, the same rule prevails: there is no such thing as a right angle, or a plumb, level or flat surface. (although I've worked in a number of custom mid century homes that come close)

Quality installation, fit, and finish depend upon the work being designed and made with jobsite imperfections in mind - obviously the case with the always excellent work from Kerf.

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