Installing IKEA cabinets in a log home.

This week I had the opportunity to revisit on of the more interesting kitchen installations I have done.  The customer wanted a modern kitchen with clean lines, and chose IKEA cabinets to get the look they were after.

The modern styling of the cabinets and the quartz countertops create a striking contrast against the rustic logs.

There are a couple of challenges to installing cabinets in a log cabin.  If the cabin is fairly new, you can’t actually fasten the cabinets to the logs, because the logs are expected to shrink dramatically in the first couple of years, and if the cabinets are securely fastened to them, they can warp and actually come apart from the stress.  So on newer log homes, it’s best to just secure the cabinets to the floor and not to the wall.  In this cabin however, the logs were several years old, and had done all the moving they were going to do.  So the biggest challenge I had was scribing the panels to the logs.

I found it was best to start with a piece of cardboard, cutting and trimming it until I had it dialed in to the shape of the logs before cutting the shape into the actual panel.  It took quite a long time, but the cabin was about two hours away from IKEA, so the last thing I wanted was to rush the job, only to screw up the cut and have to go all the way to IKEA to get a new panel!

Overall it was a fun and challenging installation, and as a bonus, at the end of the day we were visited by a couple of elk who were surprisingly unfazed by the construction noise we were making!