How well are your cabinets attched to the wall?

Well, if your kitchen cabinets are full of dishes like the ones in our home you might want to take a moment and check them after reading this short post.
Just think about all of the weight that an average cabinet is hold when it is full of dinner plates, cups, saucers, mixing bowls and the like. It is simply amazing how much weight they can and should hold. But, have you ever given much thought as to what is holding those cabinets up on the walls?

With prefabricated or factory built cabinets most are secured with screws (hardware) that is either provided by the manufacturer or it is specified in their installation manual. Most of the screws will have a torque head that requires a special driver bit that has a point that kind of looks like a star. The screw have specific places on the cabinets that they are to be inserted, they are structural points built into the cabinets to help support the weight.

The key to placing the screws is to locate a wall stud that will hold them. Keep in mind that depending on your home they might be placed at 16" to 24" intervals in the walls. It is imperative that the screws are inserted into the wall studs and not the drywall. Many times an additional piece of lumber is placed on the wall, it is secured to the studs and then the cabinets are secured to that piece of lumber.

Why do I bring this up? Well, this week while inspecting a nice home I discovered that the kitchen cabinets were literally falling off the walls! The contractor had screwed through the back of the cabinet, securing it to the wall. The problem was that the back of the cabinet was just a thin piece of panel like material that had not one thing to do with the structural strength of the cabinet. The thin back of the cabinets had detached from the wood boxes of the cabinets and the cabinets were falling forward. It was only a matter of time or an additional plate or glass before they fell!

This is a picture of the kitchen. Everything looks just fine untill you open a few doors and then you can see some of the problems.

If you look at the upper left corner you can actually see the drywall!You can see where the cabinet box has pulled away from the back panel.

You can see that the cabinets have pulled away from the wall about 3/4" of a inch. With some effort you can actually push the cabinets back to the wall.

So go home and check those cabinets. Make sure that they are attached to the walls and you might also want to move some of those heavy items a little lower.

Scott Patterson, Middle Tennessee Home Inspector

www.traceinspections.com