The Upper Cabinets Don’t Line Up

Box or door? A sixty-second test

Everything below depends on getting this right, and it takes a minute. Do it with the doors open — or better, off — so you are looking at the boxes themselves.

1. Run a level along the bottoms.Hold a 4′ level against the underside of the uppers and slide it across each joint in turn. A bubble that shifts as you cross a joint means one box sits higher than the next. On a long run, a laser line a few inches below the cabinets shows the whole row at once.
2. Run a fingertip across each joint.Slide a finger across the front edges where two boxes meet. You can feel a step about as thick as a credit card; if your fingernail catches, it is more than that. Then hold a straightedge across both faces: daylight under it at one box means that face is not flush.
3. Put the level on the side of each box.A box that is not plumb is leaning with the wall behind it. Its neighbours may be perfectly fine.
4. Close the doors and compare.If the boxes passed all three checks and the doors still look wrong, it is a door problem — the easy kind, in section 07. If a box failed, the doors are only reporting it.The tellA gap that tapers along one door while the box edge behind it runs straight is the door. A gap that tapers along a whole box, every door on it agreeing, is the box.

Bottom edges that step from box to box

The usual causes, most likely first:

• The line came from the wrong place. A wall-cabinet line measured up from the floor at each end, or up from the countertop, copies every dip in the floor into the run. It has to be one level line.
• The ledger sagged or followed the wall. A ledger board screwed into a bowed wall, or into drywall between studs, dips under the weight of the first box — and every box that rests on it inherits the dip.
• A box moved as its screw went in. Driving the top screw can draw a box up or let it settle a fraction, especially when a pilot hole wandered. That is why the level goes on after every single box.
• It is deliberate. Short cabinets over a fridge or a hood are meant to have higher bottoms; what lines through there is the tops. Decide which line each cabinet belongs to before you call it a mistake.

The fix for a box that is already on the wall:

1. Empty it and take the doors off.Then support it from below: put the ledger back under it, or prop it on a board and shims from the base cabinets.
2. Release it.Back out the 30 mm join screws on the side where it meets the box you are matching, and loosen the wall screws a few turns — enough for the box to move, not enough for it to drop.
3. Bring it to the line.Shims on the ledger raise it in small steps. For a box that sits high, take its weight, pull a shim, and let it down onto the one below.
4. Re-screw into fresh wood.The old holes in the stud are a fraction off where the screws need to be now, and a screw driven back into an old hole follows it straight back to where it was. Drive the new wall screws a little above or below the old ones on the same rail — ¾″ is plenty — into the same stud.What it feels likeA screw that finds an old hole turns suddenly easily for the first inch. Stop, back it out and move it.
5. Re-join and re-check.Clamp the front edges flush with the neighbour, drill new pilot holes beside the old join holes, drive the 30 mm screws snug, and run the level across both joints again.

If the countertop and the tile are already in, the same steps work with fewer directions to move in: see section 08.

Faces that are not flush

A face standing proud of its neighbour throws a shadow along the joint and makes the door on it look as if it is ajar. There are three causes.

• The wall behind is not flat. One box sits on a hump while the next is pulled into a hollow by its own screws. This is the commonest cause, and it is the reason for the install chapter’s rule: shim behind the rail at the stud before you tighten, and never let a screw pull a box into a hollow.
• The boxes were joined before the fronts were clamped. Once the 30 mm screws are in, a sixteenth of misalignment is locked in for good.
• A box is racked. Out of square, so one side stands forward of the other. Measure the diagonals of the box opening: equal means square. The install guide’s example is 18″ one way and 17¾″ the other — lift or push the low corner until they match before the screws go tight. A box that came off the bench racked is a different problem, with its own page.

1. Find the plane.Hold a straightedge — a long level will do — across the faces of the whole run and find the box that stands furthest forward. That box sets the plane, and every other face comes forward to meet it. You cannot push a box back into a hump in the wall.
2. Shim the recessed boxes out.Back out their wall screws a few turns, slip shims behind the rail at the stud until the face touches the straightedge, then tighten through the shims and snap them off flush.
3. Re-make the joints.Release the join screws, clamp the front edges dead flush — check with a fingertip — and re-drive the 30 mm screws in new pilot holes. Keep them on the shelf-pin line inside the box, where they will never be seen.
4. Close what is left at the ends.Bringing faces forward can leave the end of the run standing off the wall. A scribed filler or end panel closes it — the troubleshooting page covers scribing to a wall that is not straight.

Boxes that lean because the wall does

A wall that is out of plumb tips a box with it: its bottom is flush with its neighbour and its top is not, or the other way round. Often the doors tell you first. A door on a box leaning forward swings open on its own; on a box leaning back, it swings shut. If you have a door that will not stay where you leave it and its hinges are tight, put a level on the side of the box before you touch the hinges.

• Top of the box tipped back (the wall leans away from you as it rises): shim behind the top rail at the studs until the side reads plumb.
• Top of the box tipped forward (the wall leans into the room): shim behind the bottom rail instead.
• Then check the whole run with the same level, because a wall that leans at one box usually leans at the next. Plumb every box to the level, not to each other.

Plumbing the boxes moves the error to the edges: a tapering gap behind the top or bottom of the run, and a gap at the ceiling that changes along the wall. Those are scribe and trim jobs, not cabinet jobs. A wall that leans or a corner that is not square has a page of its own, with the numbers for how much it matters.

Tops against the pantry, the fridge cabinet and the ceiling

The standard heights are built to line up. Wall cabinets start at 54″, so a 30″, 36″ or 42″ upper tops out at 84″, 90″ or 96″ — exactly the heights of the tall pantries in the sizes reference. When the line breaks where an upper meets a pantry, one of them was set from the wrong reference.

• The pantry was set to the floor, not the line. The install chapter levels a tall cabinet off its own bottom panel so it lines up with the base run beside it. A pantry left wherever the floor put it can sit high or low by however much the floor slopes. Before its toe kick and the countertop beside it go on, its adjustable legs bring it back to the line.
• The uppers were measured from a low spot. Then every upper is out by the same amount and the pantry is right. Moving a whole run is a big job; measure the difference first, and check whether a crown or a scribe strip across both tops makes it disappear.
• The cabinet over the fridge. Its top should line through with the uppers; its bottom only has to clear the fridge, the hinges and the air the fridge needs. The appliance page has the clearances.
• The ceiling. If the tops are level and the gap above them tapers, the cabinets are right and the ceiling is not. Don’t tilt the run to follow it — every door would go out. Scribe it, crown it or build down to it, as in cabinets to the ceiling.

Uppers that don’t line up with the base run or the hood

Upper and base cabinets do not have to share joints — they rarely share widths — but the eye expects a few vertical lines to carry from floor to ceiling, and it notices when they don’t.

• The hood and the cooktop. The hood, or the cabinet that houses it, should be centred on the cooktop below. Mark the cooktop’s centre, carry it up the wall with a laser or a level, and check it before the boxes either side go up. Afterwards, the fix is a wider filler at one end of the run. The height the hood needs is in the appliance page.
• The ends of the run. An upper’s end panel and the base end panel below it should read as one vertical line. If they don’t, put a level on both: a leaning wall carries the upper with it, while the base was set plumb on its legs.
• The window. Uppers either side of a window look right when the margins to the casing match, and a run built out from one corner can land them uneven. The arithmetic for getting it back is the same as for a sink that is not centred under the window.
• A step that appeared with the tile. If the backsplash went up and a step at the cabinet bottoms suddenly shows, it was there all along — the straight grout line under it just made it visible. That is section 08.

What hinge adjustment can hide — and what it can’t

Once the boxes are right, the doors are a pleasant half-hour. Concealed European hinges adjust three ways — side to side, depth and height — with a screwdriver, a quarter-turn at a time, as in the finishing chapter. The table is the honest version of what that buys you.

• Square each door to its own box first, then walk the run evening the gaps between doors. It is always easier to move one door than two.
• Pairs meeting in the middle: set the gap between the pair first, then the outer reveals.
• A screwdriver, not a drill. Strip a hinge screw in particleboard and you have a different job — the stripped-screw fix is on the troubleshooting page.
• You are finished when the closed doors show one continuous hairline gap, the same from top to bottom and from one end of the run to the other.

Fixing it once the countertop and backsplash are in

With stone on the bases and tile up to the uppers, a box can still be moved, but the room has fewer directions left to move it in. In order of effort:

1. Doors first.If the box error is a sixteenth, spreading it across the reveals of two or three doors often hides it completely.
2. A light rail along the bottom.A strip of under-cabinet moulding fixed along the bottoms of the run hides a small step — and the under-cabinet lights with it. It can be a style choice rather than a repair.
3. Re-hang the one box.Empty it, doors off, and support it from the countertop on a board — protect the stone — then back the screws out, move it, and refix into fresh wood as in section 02.The catchWith tile up to the cabinet bottom you can raise a box but not lower it, and raising it uncovers a strip of untiled wall. A small strip hides behind a light rail or a caulk line; a large one is a tiling job.
4. The tops last.A crown or a scribe strip across the top of the run takes up whatever is left between the cabinets and the ceiling.

What not to do: drive the wall screws harder to pull a box into line. It racks the box, and every door on it goes crooked — the one repair guaranteed to make the problem worse.

The check sequence that stops it happening

All of this is easier to prevent than to repair, and prevention is a habit rather than a skill. It is the one-person wall-cabinet hang with the checks written in:

1. One level line for the uppers.54″ above the floor’s high point — the same point the base line came from — so it sits 19¼″ above the 34¾″ base line all along the wall. Never measure up from the floor where you happen to stand, or from the countertop.
2. A straight ledger on that line.Screwed into studs, and checked with a level along its full length before a single box goes on it.
3. Corner box first.Level, plumb, top screw first.
4. Every next box: clamp before you screw.Rest it on the ledger, clamp its front edges flush with its neighbour, drive the 30 mm join screws, then the wall screws — shimming behind the rail wherever the wall falls away.
5. Check after every box, not at the end.Level across the bottoms so far, straightedge across the faces, diagonals of the box. A fault caught at box two is a ten-minute fix; caught at box six, it is in all four boxes after it.
6. Doors last, then tune.Only now do the hinges come into it.