What’s the First Step in a Cabinet Upgrade

Before installing cabinets in your kitchen, bathroom, laundry, or garage, proper planning is essential. Careful preparation ensures that your storage fits the space perfectly, functions as needed, and complements your overall design. This includes taking precise measurements, prepping walls, and confirming appliance placement so your installation goes smoothly and delivers lasting value.

At Custom Cabinets Jacksonville, we make this process simple. Our team works with you from the start to create a plan that suits your layout, style, and daily needs. Whether you are adding veneer cabinets, replacing doors and drawer fronts, or installing floating shelves, we ensure every detail is ready before installation begins. Contact us today to get started with your cabinet upgrade.

What Steps Should I Consider Before Installing Cabinets?

Before installing the cabinet, plan the layout. Planning is the first consideration before installing custom cabinetry in the kitchen, garage, bathroom, or laundry. This ensures that the new furnishings are properly aligned with the doors, windows, electrical outlets, and appliances in the room.

More importantly, planning allows you to achieve the most optimal layout for storage, foot traffic, and the space’s function.

Measuring the Area

Measure the dimensions of the space and note the positions of the windows and doors. Whether you’re installing ready-to-assemble, stock, or custom cabinets, precise measurements ensure the right size is installed, providing a flawless fit, easy movement within the space, and unobstructed cabinet doors.

Locate and Mark the Studs

Wall-mounted units and floating shelves must be anchored into studs for stability with a nail gun. Failure to do so could result in them coming loose or collapsing under weight.

Identifying the Highest Point of the Floor

Since floors can be uneven, you’ll need to find the highest point and use that as a reference to level base cabinet legs, baseboard, or bottom panels.

Mapping the Cabinet Layout

Mapping your desired layout in the room with tape or chalk can help you visualize the sizes, shapes, and placement of your new residential cabinets and how people will move around the area. This helps you determine if what’s on paper translates to something you would want before finalizing the design.

Planning for Appliances and Countertops

Finalize appliance placement and countertop clearances early to ensure a smooth installation. This includes measurements for sinks, stoves, and refrigerators, which ensures your cabinet doors and drawer boxes open freely and align perfectly with surrounding fixtures.

Investing time in this phase ensures every detail for your cabinet upgrade is intentionally laid out for the best results. With accurate measurements, identified stud locations, a level baseline, and thoughtfully placed appliance zones, you’re establishing a solid foundation for a functional and appealing space that you can enjoy daily.

What Needs to be Done Before Cabinets are Installed?

Before cabinets are installed, the space must be completely ready for the contractors. This involves clearing the workspace, ensuring utilities and walls are prepared, and verifying that the layout and design are finalized.

Proper preparation helps avoid delays and damage, ensuring your installation proceeds smoothly and efficiently. Important Steps Before Installation:

Clear space and access paths: Remove your old drawer boxes, shelves, and appliances, and make room for movers and installers to bring in materials without obstructions. This also allows installers to determine if there is any mold or water damage that needs to be addressed before installation.
Complete utilities and site repairs: Ensure all plumbing, electrical, HVAC, drywall repairs, painting, and flooring are finished before installing your new veneer cabinets.
Protect and prep the surfaces: Install new built-in storage on clean subflooring, not finished floors, and cover floors or vents with tarps to minimize dust and damage.

Preparing a space before cabinet installation ensures the project runs without hiccups. Contractors can work efficiently with utilities in place, a clean working area, and protection against dust and damage. With these, you’re more likely to get a safer, faster installation and a finished kitchen that looks great.

Is Painting Done Before Cabinets Are Installed?

Yes, painting is typically done before your new cabinets are installed. Painting allows for cleaner, more complete paint coverage of the walls and ceiling, without having to work around the built-in storage. It also saves time and labor, reducing the need for masking or careful edge work near the finished edges of your storage.

Painting ahead of a cabinet installation ensures easy access to all wall areas, especially corners and tight spaces that would otherwise be blocked. As a result, you will get a smoother, more uniform finish and eliminate the need for cutting in around new furniture. It also allows any drywall repairs or priming to be handled without obstruction.

While touch-ups may still be needed after installation due to minor scuffs, adjustments, and other painting imperfections, painting the walls first is generally more efficient. It minimizes the risk of damage to your new cabinets’ flawless finish.

How Can I Upgrade My Existing Cabinets?

Upgrading your cabinets doesn’t always mean a full remodel. You can refresh the space with simple changes like painting, swapping hardware, or refacing the cabinet doors. These upgrades can give the space a fresh, modern look without requiring a complete overhaul.

Replace The Hardware

This is one of the easiest ways to make your drawers and shelves look new. Swap old cabinet pulls, knobs, and handles for newer ones or upgrade to modern hardware, like soft-close drawer slides, that modernize your kitchen, bathroom, or garage’s look and feel.

Refinish With a Fresh Paint or Stain

Stripping your cabinets and applying a fresh coat of paint, along with filler for small imperfections, can give them a smooth, like-new surface. This simple update can completely transform the feel of your space. You might choose a crisp white, a bold statement color, a semi-gloss finish, a stylish two-tone design, or a stain that highlights the natural beauty of hardwood or plywood.

Reface The Cabinet Fronts

Refacing involves replacing cabinet hardware, doors, and drawer box fronts, while refinishing the cabinet frame, and retaining the original cabinet boxes. This can be more cost-effective than a full replacement and gives you the option to change the finish and style of your furniture. For example, you can switch to design style fronts to completely change the look of the space without the expense of a full remodel.

Add Trim or Molding

Decorative trim, posts, cabinet feet, or table legs on island corners can elevate your room’s aesthetic. You can also add molding to flat doors to create a shaker-style or classic paneled look that complements the rest of the space.

Add Functional and Decorative Features

Under-cabinet lighting can brighten your workspace and add a modern touch. You could also add glass panels to select cabinet doors or switch some to open shelving for a lighter, airier appearance.

Depending on your space, style, and budget, upgrades can be as simple or dramatic as you need them to be. If you’re not ready for a full replacement, there are budget-friendly upgrades mentioned above that allow you to achieve a fresh look without the mess, timeline, or price of a full remodel, which can be completed within a day to a week.

Transform Your Cabinets with Smart Upgrades

Ready to get started with your cabinet remodel? We offer a wide variety of options for garage shelving, as well as bathroom, laundry, and kitchen cabinets.

Stock cabinets

RTA (ready-to-assemble) cabinets

Modular cabinets

Contact us today to schedule a complimentary consultation. We’ll help you get the right cabinets for your budget, needs, and style preferences.