It doesn’t take long to realize that the best way to install new kitchen cabinets is to do it yourself, with the help of a friend who knows their stuff. This is exactly how my wife and I recently renovated our kitchen.

The job went smoothly (very little stress on my part!) and fast (meaning just a few days preparing meals in temporary arrangements!). And the new look of our kitchen is great. You would never know that it was all done with a modified DIY kitchen cabinet installation.

I must say that we use a constructor. But he was a friend, a retired builder, who worked for very reasonable rates and let me work alongside me helping where I could and making a carpenter’s “mate” on unnecessary wages. So what we did was good for the bottom line, and in fact, our kitchen renovation cost a lot less than I had initially imagined.

Our friend pointed out that the cheapest way to build was to look at the kitchen cabinet manufacturers’ brochures and see what sets of kits they offered. It turned out that they all offered more or less the same size and configurations. Probably because kitchens are all more or less the same size and the optimal sizes for a cabinet, pantry, cupboard and bench are well known. We asked for painted kitchen cabinets. Our house is older and metal kitchen cabinets would have been a clash of styles. One day after placing the order, flat packs of ready-to-install kitchen cabinets arrived and our builder friend and I set a day to dismantle our old kitchen.

Once this was done, and it only took a day, we needed just two days to assemble the kit sets, line them up, level everything, set the workbench on top of them, and screw everything into place. Done!

So I would recommend installing new cabinets in your kitchen this way.