I recently got a wood cabinet. The wood cabinet is the hand work of a local craftsman. He basically started making cabinets because he was tired of seeing all the cheap Asian knockoffs that were populating the local craft fairs. Definitely check out his website. If you order something, tell him you got the contact from me.

The cabinet I got can be see on his site at this web page. The pictures really don’t do it justice. The white areas are magnetized. The paper bin comes out. It’s the perfect office mate. The pictures don’t show that he also puts a spirit hole in the side corner of the cabinet. In case anything friendly wants to creep in and take up residence.

Very cool all around. Unfortunately, I’m not a DIY guy…. Yet.

It came with 6 metal thingees and 6 yellow plastic thingees.

Okay to be more specific, it came with 6 copper wood screws and what I have learned (from web surfing today) are 6 yellow plastic hollow wall fasteners.

The web sites indicate I should attach the cabinet by screwing into the stud in the wall. Well, my first pass for the studs presented me with three in a row. The first was 1/2″ wide, the next 1″ wide, the third 4″ wide.

So… After checking around, the 4″ wide stud makes sense because that is the end of the house. The room on my side of the wall goes further than the room on the other side.

Upon remeasuring I think the first two are both about 1 1/2″. If my old knowledge from high school drafting and college scene craft are still in tact. That makes sense. Studs are two by fours (which means 1 1/2 x 3 1/2″) turned thin edge facing the wall.

So… I guess I put the center screws into the wall. I’m not sure if I should use the hollow wall fasteners for the stud mounting. They might not work into a stud, but at the same time, the cabinet might not sit flush if I don’t.

So, I did the only thing any self-respecting person who has jeopardized his man card should do. I IM’ed i_am_lono. Hey he was the first Hunk of Chanukah… why not.

Well, he explained how to use the hollow wall fasteners. This pretty much requires you to drill a hole roughly the size of the fasteners and then tap them gently into the wall.

The cabinet had 6 holes for mounting on the backside. 3 along the top (side, middle, side) and 3 along the bottom. I opted that the center screws for the mouting should be on the stud and the four flanking ones would go into the drywall. Through my chat it was decided that I would use the wall hangers in the studs as well. this would be done partially fro reinforcement, but primarily so that holes would all be filled with wall mounts so that the cabinet would be equally flush to the wall. Please note… this is a hand made cabinet, not machine reproduced. The wall holes weren’t exactly even on the cabinet.

So, now came the tricky part… How to transfer the drill locations to the wall. The two top outer holes were about 12″ apart. I taped a piece of legal paper to the back of the cabinet. With a fine-tip, red, sharpie(tm) marker I coloured in the paper through the mount holes. I also traced the top edge of the cabinet onto the paper.

I now had a legal piece of paper with a line indicating the top of the cabinet and just below 3 red circles. I took the paper to the wall and put the center dot right in the middle of where I’d found a stud. Then I brought it up high enough so that the cabinet looked like it’d be at a good height. Finally I used a level to pivot the paper until the top edge of the cabinet would be level. I taped the paper to the wall.

It struck me that drilling through paper might not be a great idea. It might snag and tear off during drilling. I took the sharpie(tm) marker and filled in the circles. As planned the ink went through the paper onto the wall. Paper down. Three drill hole marks. Now, the HWM (because I’m tired of typing hollow wall mounts) didn’t actually come in a box. So I didn’t know how big they were. I started by drilling a tiny hole and then used larger bits until the hole was just large enough to take the HWM.

Now it was time for help. positioning it on the wall I had shimmeringjemmy screw in the top center for stability and then ink in the bottom 3 holes. This was probably the hardest part. Getting the cabinet to line up with its top center hole and then keeping it from dragging the screw crooked while barely mounted was an endeavor.

3 more marks, 3 more holes drilled, 3 more HWM tapped in. I held the cabinet up one more time, SJ mounted the first center screw and started the two flanking it. All six screws went into their holes perfectly. The center bottom one was the hardest. It was being tapped into the wood of the stud. it was also low enough that the manual screwdriver didn’t give me enough torque. It is mostly in and I’ll find the ratchet screwdriver later to finish putting it into the wall.

But the end job. 6 perfectly mounted screws and a cabinet solidly mounted to the wall and LEVEL.

Guess I don’t loose too many Man Points after all 🙂

Pictures forthcoming.

« »