OMG! My kitchen is a trapezoid!?

Rest easy! It's not a lurking monster that only comes out at night when the lights are off or for that matter, even an uncommon construction flaw. ?Imagine a perfect world where the grass is always green and the sky is always blue. Many kitchen designers who use one or more of the various kitchen design programs learn very quickly the programs are based in the virtual perfect computer world of always blue skies and green grass where every kitchen is perfectly plumb, level and square which is as it should be. The only problem is the real world, the one outside of that virtual world, is far from perfect. It's very rare to find a house, old or new, that is perfectly plumb, level and square. One of the most common mistakes made in kitchen design is thinking, for example, ten feet of cabinets will fit in ten feet of wall space. The program draws a perfect rectangle wall exactly ten feet long so it just stands to reason ten feet of cabinets will fit perfectly. Fact is most rooms are either a trapezoid, parallelogram or a combination of both. Okay, so you didn't do well in high school geometry but for the experienced cabinet person working with these shapes is a daily occurrence. These odd geometric shaped rooms are in all houses, even the ones you may think are a perfectly square or rectangle. Whenever cabinets are to be installed on a wall that has a return wall adjacent to either end it's important to always reduce the overall length of the cabinets by at least one inch or more to insure the cabinets will actually fit the space. Most factory built cabinets, the ones mass produced in a production line setting, offer matching stained and finished filler boards to make up the difference. Custom built cabinets made specifically for the kitchen they are to be installed in have what is known as extended stiles on the end cabinets which are usually trimmed to make the cabinets fit a given space. A good kitchen designer will always incorporate one of these options into their design to insure the project goes smoothly at time of installation so your dream kitchen will actually fit your trapezoid room.
Follow along with us. The next article will be about accumulated tolerance. This engineering 'fly in the pudding' fact of life is overlooked by almost everyone in the cabinet industry.