How to make IKEA kitchen base cabinets 100% level in minutes.
A Short Guide: Mastering Kitchen Cabinet Leveling.
Levelling your DIY kitchen cabinets could not be easier with this simple hack.
Achieving level base cabinets is crucial when installing a new kitchen.
If your cabinets aren’t level, they’ll ruin the aesthetic of your new kitchen, but it will also, later in the installation, be difficult to align doors and drawers.
Luckily, this game-changing cabinet install hack will guarantee that you get 100% level cabinets in just a few minutes. I use this very method to level IKEA kitchen cabinets, but this hack works on any brand of base kitchen cabinets if they have adjustable legs.
You can watch the full video below or keep reading to learn more.
What is a Laser Level?
Say goodbye to the hassles of traditional spirit levels and welcome the precision of a laser level.
I recommend investing in a laser level if you install your kitchen cabinets. A laser level is a commonly used tool in construction.
A good laser level makes many tasks much more manageable, such as installing the suspension rail or levelling base cabinets. A laser level is a hands-off tool that can stand on a tripod or be mounted on a pole, as shown below, and projects a level line onto your wall or workspace. You can always see the level without fussing with a handheld level or messy tape and pencil marks.
If you work alone, as I do, a laser level is genuinely a third hand when doing levelling work.
How Do You Level Kitchen Cabinets With A Laser Level?
Setup your baseline.
First, set up your laser to indicate a line a few inches above your cabinets. It doesn’t need to be anything exact as long as it is roughly a few inches above the cabinets.
Next, take a small scrap piece of wood or something similar that is rigid and that you can draw on.
Hold the piece of wood on top of one of the corners of the cabinet at the wall. Not at the front but at the wall since the suspension rail is at the desired height already.
Make a straight pencil mark exactly where the laser line hits the wood. This will be your baseline.
Check & Correct.
Move the piece of wood to another corner of the cabinet. Those two points are level if the laser still hits the pencil line.
However, this corner must be adjusted if the laser and pencil lines do not match. Twist the leg below this corner to adjust the cabinet up or down until the pencil mark aligns with the laser line.
Finalizing.
Use the same method to check and adjust all the remaining corners a bit at a time until the entire cluster of cabinets is level.
And that’s it!
This hack will guarantee you get 100% level cabinets all the time, and it only takes a few minutes from set-up to finish.
It couldn’t be easier than that!
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Go Green and save batteries
This is the third laser level I bought since I started to install kitchens, and hopefully, the last. It uses the same battery as my power tools and can run for a long time on a full charge.
This one has a green laser light, making it much easier to see the lines in broad daylight.
It is not a cheap tool, though, but I would have saved quite a bit of dollars if I had bought it, to begin with, instead of purchasing more affordable options twice.
Since I use the laser for a lot more than just checking ceilings and hanging rails, it has been money well spent for me.
Put it up and forget about it.
Before digging in and spending money on this pole, I clipped my (first) laser to a few suspension rails resting on something high in the corner of the room. Sounds time-consuming and complicated, right? Well, it was.
Also, I had to figure out an alternative way to position the level when installing the last suspension rail.
Now, with this pole, I put it up in a favourable position, and it just sits there during the entire installation, allowing me to move my level up or down easily.