It can be an exciting time for the homeowner when it comes to kitchen or bathroom cabinet replacement. This is a great opportunity for the addition of personalized style and a time of improvement and change. Getting to that final result though will take a little work.

Most of this work will fall to the contractor you will ultimately use for the job. However, to streamline the process, there is one area in which you can certainly help. To give your cabinet replacement project a significant boost, you can gather and provide measurements to the pros. This will subsequently speed their ability to get you prices and info and thus get the project going. So, how do you gather all of the major measurements of your cabinets and their space? Here are three, easy steps to measuring your cabinets before calling the pros.

Measure Walls and Ceiling Height

First, you can begin by measuring the room’s walls in which the cabinet work will take place. Measure from one side to the other and from the top to the bottom of each wall. This should provide a height and width for each. This ultimately provides spatial planning on paper should any spatial rearrangements need to occur.

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Take special note of your ceiling height. This is the measurement from the floor to the ceiling. This is a special number for several reasons. There are certain standard sizes in countertop thickness, backsplash height, and several wares that will factor in with the ceiling height. With all of these numbers then factored, the planner can go on to derive upper, middle, and lower cabinet potential sizes. This is quite important to the overall layout.

Measure and Map-Out Existing Cabinets

Your existing cabinets will have a lot of helpful information for the proper selection and installation of new cabinets. To gather it, first measure the cabinets externally. You want to get measurements here for height, width, and depth. Once this is done, map-out where the cabinets are located on the wall. Do this by measuring off of the edge of their containing wall to the edge of the cabinet. For example, “The right side of the cabinet in Bob’s house is 36 inches from the right side of the wall”.

If you have a centered window over your sink, getting a center measurement off of this is even better. Measure from one side of the window to the other to find its center. From this center, now you can measure out to cabinet edges or centers. This provides an even greater picture as far as current spatial relations and what that holds for the incoming cabinetry.

Draw It

Finally, the best way to go about representing these measurements is often through a sketch. It doesn’t have to be perfect just as long as it is legible and shows measurements clearly attached to their corresponding objects. Also, don’t be concerned if the drawing requires multiple pages to complete. This ample information only serves to help along the process even more. For some, this drawing portion can actually be a rather enjoyable part of the experience.

In conclusion, your gathering of measurements before calling the pros will do two things. It will speed your ability to know your available cabinetry choices and their associated costs, and it will help to greatly expedite the actual fruition of the process as a whole. Follow these simple steps and impress your contractor with a platter of info upfront to get things moving. You’ll be glad you did.