A start-to-finish guide for homeowners doing their own kitchen: how to measure a room that isn’t square, lay out a plan that works, choose materials that last, and install it all the way the trade does — without hiring out the whole job.
This is the guide we wished existed when we started: no fluff, no filler, and honest about which parts you should hand to a pro. Every step is written for a confident beginner and built around real, frameless European cabinets — so what you read here matches what shows up on your pallet.
What really drives the cost, letting the room choose the layout, the order the work happens in, and which jobs to hand to a pro.
The exact way to measure walls, appliances and clearances so you never order the wrong size.
Work zones, corner solutions, upper heights — then see the whole thing in 3D before you commit.
Frameless vs framed, door styles, painted vs thermofoil, countertops, and the hardware that actually matters.
The factory’s own sequence: reference line, corner-first base cabinets, and the one-person wall-cabinet hang.
Hinge tuning, handle templates, toe kicks, and the small details that separate DIY from “who did your kitchen?”
Every standard dimension in one place — and how to read B18, W3030 or SB36 so a quote stops being a foreign language.
Hood height, fridge openings and air gaps, a dishwasher into a stone counter, cooktop clearances — the numbers that are not negotiable.
A video quick start from an empty room to a PDF, then a full tour of the free 3D planner — what each tool does, every shortcut, and fifteen tricks.
The free countertop drawing tool in the planner: trace the cabinets or draw freehand, set overhangs, seams, cut-outs and waterfalls, and export a drawing measured to 1/16″.
Invite your partner or contractor into the design: they watch every change as you make it, point at what they mean, chat or call — and one person drives, so nobody overwrites anybody.
Reveal, scribe, stile, blind corner, ledger board, high loop — 72 terms, one line each, with a live filter.
The suggestion that names your next cabinet is not a language model — it is the design engine run one step at a time, with your own cabinets locked.
The moments the software is the problem, not the kitchen — a click that draws a wall, a cabinet that snaps back, a Save that seems to do nothing.
What the dealer’s file actually holds, and the free viewer that turns it into a top view, every wall elevation and the item list — from any catalogue, nothing uploaded.
Sign the quote, note the drawing, delete a page, merge two files and put your own letterhead on top — free, in a browser tab. Plus what “white-out” really does and does not hide.
Twelve problems that stop a kitchen half-way, in the order they tend to happen — each with how to tell which version you have, then the fixes from cheapest to most drastic, and where the job stops being yours. The quick versions live on the troubleshooting page.
Flat-pack cabinets arrived damaged, short or wrong? What to check at the truck, how to tell transit damage from a defect, and what to send so it gets sorted.
Diagonals that disagree, a box that rocks, doors that taper after assembly: how to tell a racked or twisted flat-pack cabinet, square it, and keep it square.
Measured wrong and the run is too long, or stops short of the wall? Size the problem, take it out in the cheapest place, and know what never to cut on a frameless box.
Corner not 90°, wall leaning, a gap growing behind the run? Measure bow, lean and angle, decide where the error goes, and scribe it out without racking a box.
A drain stub in the way, an outlet behind a base cabinet, a floor register or radiator under the run: what you can cut around, what has to move, and who moves it.
No stud behind your upper cabinet? Shift it onto one, join the run, add blocking, or fix into steel, plaster or concrete — and why anchors alone won’t do.
Uppers not level with each other, faces not flush, or out of line with the pantry? Tell a box fault from a door fault, then fix each in the right order.
How level cabinets must be for quartz or granite, a 15-minute straightedge test, and how to fix the run on its legs before the fabricator comes back to template.
Why a dishwasher won’t fit under the countertop — new flooring, a strip across the opening, a narrow gap — and the fixes in order, from its own feet to raising the cabinet run.
A leak swelled your sink cabinet floor. Find the drip, dry the box, tell a sandable lip from a ruined panel, and when to lay a new floor or swap the cabinet.
How to fill a chip in melamine or high-gloss doors, stick lifting edge banding back down, why steam makes it peel, and when a swollen edge means a new door.
Most kitchen islands are not fixed to the floor. Why yours moves, the fixes to try first, and how to reinforce one with 2×4 blocking when it really needs it.
There is an assistant in the corner of the planner’s canvas. These six pages are what she can see, what to say to her, every command that changes your design, a whole kitchen designed out loud, and what to do on the day she goes quiet.
What a voice assistant can actually see on your screen, the three questions it answers better than any help page, and what we deliberately never let it decide.
The sentences that work, why you point with the mouse and not with words, how to say measurements out loud, and a full worked call.
Every voice command that changes the design — how the numbering works, why there is no swap, and every refusal you will hear.
Nine real failure modes in the order they happen, how the free minutes work, and exactly what happens to what you say.
One kitchen designed out loud, start to finish — where the mouse still does the work, where a sentence is faster, and the four places the planner says no.
What changes when the plan is in your hands at the wall, in the iPad and iPhone app — coming soon: a room drawn by voice, a wake word that only listens on screen, and what a browser still does better.
Longer, opinionated pieces on the decisions that happen before a single cabinet is ordered — written by the people who make the cabinets, and honest about where our own answer stops.
IKEA’s planner, Planner 5D, HomeByMe, SketchUp Free and ours — what each is best at, what the free tier really gives you, and where each one stops.
Quartz, granite, porcelain, solid surface, laminate and butcher block — how each one actually fails, and the six questions a fabricator will ask you on template day.
Four ways to buy the same kitchen, framed vs frameless, and the six specifications that decide whether a kitchen still closes properly in ten years.
The errors that look fine on a drawing and cost money on install day — fridge doors that will not open, dishwashers blocking the corner, the missing filler — each with the fix.
What AI does brilliantly, the five things it gets wrong while looking confident, how to spot a render that cannot be built, and the order to use it in.
Five different things get sold as “talk to AI and design your kitchen” — four of them cannot see your kitchen. What each one is for, and the five tests worth applying.
Five colour families and what each does to a room, undertones, two-tone rules, sheen, and why showroom light lies to you.
Sizing by drawer width, the exact placement rules for doors and drawers, and the template that stops you drilling the wrong hole.
Blind corner, diagonal, carousel, corner drawers or nothing at all — what each one costs you in access, and how to test it on the plan.
Whether the room can have one is arithmetic. Clearances, seating overhang, services, and the tape-on-the-floor test.
One-wall, galley or L, the numbers that decide, and the trades that turn a cramped room into a working one.
Undermount, drop-in or apron front, sizing the sink base, bowl depth, and everything decided before the counter is templated.
Under-cabinet strips at the front edge, colour temperature that matches across layers, pendant heights, and what must be decided before the cabinets are built.
Every step from demolition to the final touch-up, the reason each sits where it does, and the countertop wait in the middle of it all.
Three different builds hide behind one question — a taller door, a stacked box, or a build-down and crown — and a ceiling that is never level decides which one survives.
The order a shop works in — faucet on the window, bowl on the faucet, box last — and the four ways to absorb the inches left over.
The 35 mm cup, overlay arithmetic, 110° versus 155°, and the three families of drawer slide — the hardware you never choose and always feel.
Pull-outs, bins, trays and dividers are sized to the cabinet, not to the kitchen — which is why they have to be decided before the boxes are ordered.
Three common door types will not hold paint at all. How to identify what you have, and what the factory does that a brush cannot.
Not a budget question — a question about what your existing boxes will take. The ten-minute inspection that answers it, with a screwdriver.
Formaldehyde standards in plain terms, why emissions are a per-part question, and what the new-kitchen smell usually is.
The dimensional discipline a shop works to — 34½″ plus a top, 3″ steps, the 32 mm hole grid — and the two places to spend your accuracy.
Plan, elevation, and the symbols that cost money when they are wrong — plus the sign-off checklist to run before you approve anything.
The parts of a kitchen renovation that depend on where you live — what your city, your condo board and your region’s waste depot actually say, quoted from their own pages, for Toronto and the towns around it.
What twelve GTA municipalities say about cabinets, walls and plumbing, why electrical goes to the ESA and not the city, and why gas is never a DIY job.
What the Condo Act really says, what real buildings ask for, the five design decisions the building makes for you, and getting a kitchen up the elevator.
What the GTA’s Habitat for Humanity ReStores take, how to remove cabinets whole, and where each region sends what the curb will not.
Doors that will not stay shut, screws that spin, a gap at the wall, a box that is out of level — every common cabinet problem, and the order to try the fixes in.
The 243 questions DIYers most search — measuring, corners, the right screws, hinge gaps, care — each answered and linked into the guide.
It matches real cabinets. Everything here is built around frameless (European) construction with full-overlay doors, slotted-in backs and three solid rails across the back of every wall cabinet — the way Flip cabinets are actually made — and the install chapter follows the manufacturer’s official sequence, not a generic one. Where installers legitimately disagree (base-first vs walls-first), we tell you both and explain the trade-off instead of pretending there’s one right answer.
Yes — the cabinet work (levelling, joining and hanging boxes, doors and hardware) is well within reach of a careful first-timer with a drill, a level and patience. The parts to hand off are the ones with real risk: gas, pressurized water, 240-volt wiring, and stone countertop templating.
Plan on roughly a day per run of cabinets for install once everything is on site, plus the planning, measuring and material-selection time up front. Rushing the level lines and the first corner cabinet is where days get lost later, so the slow start pays off.
Anything gas, water-under-pressure or 240 volts, and stone countertop fabrication. A permit and a licensed pro for those cost far less than fixing a leak or a fault behind brand-new cabinetry.
No exotic tools — a drill/driver, a good level (a laser helps), a stud finder, cabinet clamps, shims and a tape measure cover the whole install. The full list lives at the top of the install chapter.
Work through the chapters in order, or jump straight to the step you’re stuck on. Either way, the free 3D planner is the fastest way to turn “I think it fits” into an exact plan you can order from.
Open the 3D planner →