I am embarking on putting in kitchen units (from ikea). The wall with
the run of cabinets is 3.0m exactly, with enclosing walls on either
side. I have balanced 4 sets of 600 units plus 1 500, which allows a
buffer of 100mm to allow for any spacing issues. Crude illustration
below using ascii chars:

gap 3.0m gap
-------------------------------------------------------
|5 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 500 | 600 |5 |
| |_________|_________|_________|_______|_________| |
| |
| |
| |


My question is, do I start the first cabinet in 4-5cm and put a facia
over the gap, or do I start the first cabinet flush with the wall also
the last cabinet also flush to the opposite wall and put the gap in
the middle of the cabinets somewhere?

rgds
Monkey

monkey wrote:
I am embarking on putting in kitchen units (from ikea). The wall with
the run of cabinets is 3.0m exactly, with enclosing walls on either
side. I have balanced 4 sets of 600 units plus 1 500, which allows a
buffer of 100mm to allow for any spacing issues. Crude illustration
below using ascii chars:

gap 3.0m gap
-------------------------------------------------------
|5 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 500 | 600 |5 |
| |_________|_________|_________|_______|_________| |
| |
| |
| |


My question is, do I start the first cabinet in 4-5cm and put a facia
over the gap, or do I start the first cabinet flush with the wall also
the last cabinet also flush to the opposite wall and put the gap in
the middle of the cabinets somewhere?

rgds
Monkey

Why not put a tea-towel rail or a slot for trays in the 100mm gap?
Phil

On 15 Oct 2004 (monkey) wrote:

I am embarking on putting in kitchen units (from ikea). The wall with
the run of cabinets is 3.0m exactly, with enclosing walls on either
side. I have balanced 4 sets of 600 units plus 1 500, which allows a
buffer of 100mm to allow for any spacing issues. Crude illustration
below using ascii chars:

gap 3.0m gap
-------------------------------------------------------
|5 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 500 | 600 |5 |
| |_________|_________|_________|_______|_________| |
| |
| |
| |


My question is, do I start the first cabinet in 4-5cm and put a facia
over the gap, or do I start the first cabinet flush with the wall also
the last cabinet also flush to the opposite wall and put the gap in
the middle of the cabinets somewhere?

Whatever you want to do, but unless you want to leave a slot for
storing trays in the middle I'd have all the units together and centred
between the walls. If you do that you can bolt the units together for
greater rigidity and you won't have to worry about the walls not being
quite parallel or vertical, or have to remove skirting board if
present. You might of course have to trim the worktop to fit, or fill a
small gap. You could fix a batten along each side wall,*but with only a
5cm gap I wouldn't bother.

You might want to fit a full 3m fascia board along the bottom rather
than have separate boards for each unit. Check that the floor is level
and if necessary level up the carcases by packing them underneath
before you fit the worktop.

--
Richard Porter
Mail to username ricp at domain minijem.plus.com
"You can't have Windows without pains."

"monkey" wrote in message
om...
I am embarking on putting in kitchen units (from ikea). The wall with
the run of cabinets is 3.0m exactly, with enclosing walls on either
side. I have balanced 4 sets of 600 units plus 1 500, which allows a
buffer of 100mm to allow for any spacing issues. Crude illustration
below using ascii chars:

gap 3.0m gap
-------------------------------------------------------
|5 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 500 | 600 |5 |
| |_________|_________|_________|_______|_________| |
| |
| |
| |


My question is, do I start the first cabinet in 4-5cm and put a facia
over the gap, or do I start the first cabinet flush with the wall also
the last cabinet also flush to the opposite wall and put the gap in
the middle of the cabinets somewhere?

rgds
Monkey

Side note.
The combination of 600's and 500 you have chosen seems to be ..the minimum
number of units to fill the width. 600 width units are very big and the
doors open out a long way.
If its not too late, you could go for 500's all the way, leaving whatever
size gap at each end to allow you to add some thing else like a wine rack
and tray storage like Phil said.
Also, a row of 600 width units will look impersonal like a canteen or
restuarant kitchen.

Arthur

"Arthur" wrote in message ...
"monkey" wrote in message
om...
I am embarking on putting in kitchen units (from ikea). The wall with
the run of cabinets is 3.0m exactly, with enclosing walls on either
side. I have balanced 4 sets of 600 units plus 1 500, which allows a
buffer of 100mm to allow for any spacing issues. Crude illustration
below using ascii chars:

gap 3.0m gap
-------------------------------------------------------
|5 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 500 | 600 |5 |
| |_fridge__|_________|_extr____|_______|_________| |
| |
| |
| |


My question is, do I start the first cabinet in 4-5cm and put a facia
over the gap, or do I start the first cabinet flush with the wall also
the last cabinet also flush to the opposite wall and put the gap in
the middle of the cabinets somewhere?

rgds
Monkey

Side note.
The combination of 600's and 500 you have chosen seems to be ..the minimum
number of units to fill the width. 600 width units are very big and the
doors open out a long way.
If its not too late, you could go for 500's all the way, leaving whatever
size gap at each end to allow you to add some thing else like a wine rack
and tray storage like Phil said.
Also, a row of 600 width units will look impersonal like a canteen or
restuarant kitchen.

Arthur


Many thanks for you replies.

On the good advice above I changed the 600 cabinets to have 2 x 300
doors - it seems to look ok.

I should have mentioned there is an in built fridge and cooker in the
run of units which are both inflexibly 600.

I also quite favour the idea of a wine rack, however, swmbo considers
them a dust collector. I had to capitulate as in reality she's the
boss of dusting etc :-)

I am just doing the wall cabinets first as swmbo still needs to use
the kitchen and we just don't have any room to temporarily store
things elsewhere. This is probably the wrong way as I would have
preferred to strip everything out from a work environment viewpoint. I
am also doing just one side of the kitchen at a time along the same
theme to ensure we're not without the cooker, fridge and sink all at
the same time. Let me know if this method is likely to lead to a cock
up!

As an update I put in the above cabinets over the weekend and it seems
to have gone quite well (it certainly pleased swmbo, who was initially
a bit skeptical in regard to me and kitchen diy). I am very glad I
left a spacing gap as the walls were just terrible, that and the facia
panels pretty much ate up the available spacing gap.

rgds
Monkey