How to Measure a Kitchen
When you’re renovating your kitchen as a DIY project or whether hiring a contractor, it is both beneficial and educational to take your own measurements. However, measuring for kitchen cabinets isn’t necessarily an easy task. It’s imperative to record center points for appliances, gas lines, and plumbing. Door openings and other obstacles. Follow the next four steps to measuring for your kitchen cabinets.
Step 1: Draw your space
Grab a few necessary tools, a tape measure, a pencil, and a scratch pad. Next, stand in the middle of your space and figure out what type of kitchen you have. Is it an L-shape, a U-shape, a Galley (cabinets on 1 wall), or a combination of those? Once you’ve narrowed down your layout, draw on the paper; your lines will represent your walls. Sketch in windows, doors, and doorways, and appliances. This will be a rough drawing/sketch, it does not have to be a perfect drawing, but it should be legible. Prime Cabinetry has a unique measuring guide template that should help you along.
https://www.primecabinetry.com/kitchendesign/index/download/
Step 2: Measure your walls
Spoiler alert !!!!! you cannot just measure your existing kitchen cabinets and send it to a cabinet vendor. If you do; the designer may not know how much available space they should have to the cabinet layout.
Measure wall length from corner to corner moving in a clockwise position. Start at the beginning of the wall, pulling the tape measure to the corner, and repeating steps around the room until the walls are all accounted. Record all dimensions in inches to make it easier for you.
If you have an existing island or adding one be sure to measure the space you want to add cabinets as well as accounting for countertop overhang.
Photo by diynetwork.com
Step 3: Record dimensions of appliance centerlines, plumbing & gas, windows and room openings
When measuring the fixed features of the room, you should follow these steps accordingly for each measure.
Appliance centerlines: you are recording widths, depths, and heights of appliances
Plumbing centerlines: Measure from the corner of the wall to the centerline of your plumbing line and gas line.
Room openings and windows: measure casing to casing by pulling your tape measure and on the outside of the casing to the opposite side of the casing allow you to get overall dimensions.
Getting this necessary information will ward off issues with your cabinets during installation.
During new construction, you should measure the same way but record them differently. Most builders will send blueprints to designers prematurely for bidding purposes. But if they don’t have plans they may do a rough measure on site. Just be mindful that if you are measuring a space without drywall you must account for that before sending to your designer.
Step 4: Measure your ceiling height
When measuring ceiling heights, it is very important to take several measurements as the height can vary in different spots in the room. Many older homes have soffits and will need to be taken into consideration when creating a design. Both points are critical to what height cabinet you can install on your walls. Whether you have a standard kitchen or one much grandeur you will contend with standards in the industry. The standard height of wall cabinets is 30”, 36”, and 42” high. For your base cabinet height, it will typically be 34 ½”, and the backsplash height should be 18”. When you use the standard heights and subtract from the ceiling height it will determine your wall cabinet height.
Ceiling height also plays a pivotal role in determining what size mouldings can be mounted on the wall cabinet. If you were really thinking about using a stacked crown effect or butting cabinets up to the ceiling look at the following photo below to video from Prime Cabinetry to show you how to measure accurately.
