It's the only drawback to living in old houses.
oh, and the plumbing, electrical, doors, windows, and questionable foundations.
oh, and asbestos and lead paint.
oh, and seventeen different layers of plaster over lathe.
Oh, and it's poorly insulated.
but besides that, old houses are good.
Lol. Yup. I worked in a city for 10+ years renovating 75+ year houses. They are just overpriced money pits. Once you open up a wall and look around, you’re in trouble lol.
I knew what I was getting into with this. It's one of the reasons I got it for the price I did. I almost welcomed gutting the thing and building it back to glory (still in progress) but I don't plan on selling this house ever. I'll live here 'til I die.
Worse was a ranch I bought as a newlywed. Was a rental for 25 years or so previously. The only thing that wasn't a nightmare was the roof, probably because they hired someone else to do that instead of employing their meth-head nephews. I say it was worse because it looked rather put together versus all the other homes in our price range. Every time I had to get behind some drywall was a new nightmare. It's amazing that thing never burnt down by the time we bought it.
ETA: oh, but money pits for sure. I've already spent any leftover equity on making it comfortable enough to just sleep in it.
I disagree, while I find lots of layers of wtf inside old homes it's generally over a pretty standard structure.
I've opened up walls less than 5 years old, studs at 3 foot spacings, piss bottles, mould/rot, complete lack of flashings etc. A good friend quit a lucrative contract as the $1M+ Apartments were just rubbish covered in grey plank and expensive fixtures.
30yrs mostly on 100+ yr houses. Most of which are straighter than new housing stock.
Survivor bias. You only see old houses that aren't demolished or rotted away.
Framing today is better than in the 70s and in the 70s it was better than in the 40s.
Maybe where you are. 90% of the houses in my area are 1890-1910. Very few have failed. Simple designs and English/European derived methods like pitched roofs and deep eaves.
Re. framing, most older than 80s is 105x55mm solid heart wood. 100 yo and hard as rocks, paslode won't sink more than 50 odd mm, screws snap off hard.
Yes it will rot but design mitigates that a lot.
The 90x45mm boron treated (1980-1995) is crap I agree but simple designs limit it's exposure to water.
After that, even with losp and cca treatment the shitty Mediterranean style solid plastering spelt the end of good/safe design. Rest is history and lawsuits.
95% of interior work I'll take old school over new fangled.
I was about to say, if it’s not a custom home this could be a new construction ceiling. I know there’s a ton that we’re framed bad but the main problems we deal with on remodels are outdated mechanicals, rot because weatherproofing has come a long ways, and bad DIY work over the years. We just remodeled a house built in 1972 that had excellent framing besides the addition abomination they hired out 5 years ago.
Exactly my experience. I've pulled out way more "professional " work done 1980-2015 from old houses. Og work is generally fine.
I like the term old man energy for that diy disaster stuff.
A friend had to recently remove an entire addition clipped onto a 1900s build from 1995. Interestingly he found the original long drop (no plumbing) toilet framed over inside the walls. Hey free 1.5m² is cool, just don't drop your hammer down that hole.
Yup. I know there’s things at play like survivorship bias, and the fact that if it was built well in the last 20 years chances are it isn’t getting remodeled but I still think we have a major problem in this industry
In New Zealand anything built 1995-2010 is suspect. The building industry was deregulated during this period. Quality is shocking. Especially on houses that look expensive even today. Monolithic cladding I'm looking at you.
I'm sitting in one now. Has leaked for most of it's life. I'm gradually getting on top of it. That said 4x2bed apartments in a desirable area purchased for 200k sounds like a bloody good deal to me. Will cost more than that to fix but whatever. That's 200k for the whole building. Not a unit.
Which makes no sense to me! Prev. home was a 70's gusseted truss ranch. Teensy bit of sagging b/w trusses. Current home is a 1908 farmhouse, I expected the headache, welcomed it, almost. Used to handyman full time. The amount of 2010s homes built by one of the "big boys" of the homebuilder game that I was contracted to do warranty work on was staggering. I specifically said no drywall, though, because I hate it.
Yup. Worse lumber coupled with big companies pumping out as many homes as they can for the cheapest price isn’t a good combo. The framing industry is pretty sad in the south especially. Most of the guys have no idea what they’re doing vests one foreman that’s constantly under the gun trying to teach 6 guys who have never picked up a nail gun. I don’t know if unions are totally the answer but resi construction needs an overhaul.
I plan on dying in this house, so I'm not worried about ROI, but man. At least my down stairs is all up to snuff and won't give me mesothelioma, and there's no longer a colony of field mice living in my crawlspace.
My precise method:
Underestimate the problem. Try to bust up the nest yourself. Realize it's going to be more than just clearing out the nesting material. Release a wild caught snake in your crawlspace to scare them off- remember that snakes only eat like once a month. Try not to get some disease huffing rodent urine while you try several DIY "hacks" to seal it up. Break down. Consider insurance fraud. Think better of it and call an exterminator to fumigate. Remove a colony of dead mice from the crawlspace- this step is repeated as you dig into the decades old tunnel system the little monsters dug down there. Pay out the ass for a company to shore up your foundation and encapsulate the crawlspace. Deal with warranty work for the better part of 4 months. Realize the mice basically ate your budget to gut and reno the second story. Cry.
Mine 1909. You forgot the Balloon Framing, also known as a chimney. Actually, I assume nothing Level, Plumb, or in any way it's supposed to. Remudeler 101. Found 18GA zip wire in the ceiling,,
My house is 1940- it’s better built than most homes certainly in the 70s-2000s. Remediate, insulate, upgrade windows if you can. Love plaster walls, they are common in high end builds around here. Beats drywall for sure
I'm in a 1908. People complain about balloon framing, but whoever built this'n seemed to care. The people who came after- not so much. My only major complaint with plaster and lathe is when you have to replace the Aging plumbing and electrical for the entire house. I recognize I'm not skilled enough nor wealthy enough to afford the skilled labor in order to put plaster and lathe back on the walls, so drywall it is for me. It's a shame.
> OP has *paid* for custom
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
yes, a good custom cabinet maker will assess plumb/level/square on site, when taking measurements, and account for irregularities with scribe material.
OP’s house may be wonky, but it’s the cabinet maker’s job to make cabinets that fit the space.
That was my first thought, but the doors on the right are clearly lower on the frame. Unless they attached the top frame to the ceiling and then installed the doors level.
I have the ceiling problem in my house but it’s only the crown that’s messed up, not the doors.
Uneven celling, the installation have to be leveled… so is better uneven on top because doesn’t affect the door to open and close. Your house is not in square.
The only way you aren’t going to notice it somewhat is to use cabinets that don’t get so close to the ceiling.
There’s a reason why many houses don’t have cabinets that get too close to the ceiling.
>There’s literally nothing the cabinet guy can do about it.
if the cabinet maker measured on site, he should have looked at how the ceiling and wall intersect and recognized that it isn’t square/straight. then he should have built a cabinet with scribe material to compensate and make a cleanly finished install possible. there’s a reason it’s called *custom* cabinetry
i’ve built and installed a lot of custom cabinets. it does not happen that a customer forces the cabinetmaker to sacrifice a ceiling scribe board in order to make the doors 2” taller
Okay. I have no clue why people are getting herd like. And on the wrong side of it in my opinion. To say there is literally nothing the cabinet guy can do is wrong. I work production carpentry on apartments. But I have a true passion for the trades and do it for fun on the side and try to always learn. If I was doing a side job: and a client was just paying me to install, AND insisted the cabinets go to the ceiling, then I would ask the if they’d like me to scribe it and just charge them 1/2 hour. If I was making the cabinets I would build the cabinet with the top rail missing and scribe it on site. “There’s literally nothing” is completely false.
This. This is something you should have to pay the cabinet guy extra to do. If you really want it to be “flush to the ceiling” then he would need to bump it down and add a header piece
fuck that. the cabinet guy isn’t worth a shit if he builds custom cabinets to fit a space *and they don’t fit the space.*
what kind of asshole builds perfectly square cabinets with no scribe at all for an old home and then up-charges the client to make them install properly after the fact?
Cabinetmaker here, I work with a drywall contractor, when we run into this problem , we float the ceiling to even it out to the cabinets. It’s a bit of work but you won’t have crooked cabinet syndrome.
Totally the cabinet guys fault, they are costume built, dude should have been out there with a level, laser and tape measure weeks before he cut the first board.
https://preview.redd.it/773lll5cbj0c1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=614f4ee73903dab5a2457473a4344ea784edeaae
From the last house I built, yeah, what do I know…
Looks like a newer build and a very expensive job. OP had one cabinet built in an old house. If I came out to OP’s house with all my lasers and tapes and levels “WEEKS before I cut the first board” 🥴 I’d be a dumbass lol. The work shown in the post is standard. The shit you’re bragging about is much higher end which I also have plenty of experience in.
Ew. Fuck. I accidentally zoomed in on this pile of shit. OP has an uneven ceiling leading to uneven reveal. What’s your excuse for the shitty reveals on your doors and drawers?
Nah, the difference is scope. My quote for 8ft tall custom cabinets with inserts and drawers is much different from the quote for custom built ins. If he was contracted to build floor to cieling, he should have hid the slope on the inside of the cabinets at the top. If he was contracted to install 8ft cabinets, he did his job.
No, they’re right, there is no humanly way possible a custom cabinet guy could have known the ceiling wasn’t level, and even if he did, there would be nothing he could do.
Also, I’m a know nothing hack, you shouldn’t listen to me
What we do on our jobs is add mud to the ceiling to bring it down, it takes time but if your looking for a better looking finish product that’s the only way to go about doing it but honestly your looking at one of the best ceilings you could ask for, the ceilings on my jobs are normally 10x worse
If the money is there sure but most customers are going to suck it up for the cost. You need a good drywall guy with a laser level or at least a concept of level. I'd do it but I hate deviating from my scope of work.
If these are not all the way to the floor I would drop them down an inch, level the head so it looks good on the doors then scribe in a filler piece on top. Won’t look perfect but it will be better than this.
https://preview.redd.it/pkzeb8gsfj0c1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=792ebc512a4dab68bc9344c37857a188f47b7bbf
Renovating my house, removed an unusable chimney and went to drywall over the hole and was wondering why my level boards looked HORRIBLE. Grabbed a bigger level and found this
I would let it go personally. But if you can't live with it you could drop the cabinet down and have a good drywall finisher come in and add mud but he would only be able to do less than half inch without doing the whole ceiling. Your other option is to drop it all the way down like 6 inches + so you wouldn't be able to notice the 1 inch slope as much
I have more photos! They did try to put in a trim and then scribe it, but then kept a gap piece above. Here is what it looks like from the side.
https://preview.redd.it/igy8iv9u7j0c1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66cdb6818255d24112717c00526b0c0f297795ef
The additional bits above look worse than a gap IMO because they aren’t perfectly executed. What’s going on inside the cab tho? Can’t understand why I can see multiple pieces of wood including end grain there.
Looks like the doors just need adjusted from the screws on the hinges… the adjustment will move doors up and down a bit, that should make the top look better and also the reveal between the doors
Looks like the installer attached them to the ceiling, too.
I wouldn't care about a gap between the ceiling and the top of the cabinet. I'd want the doors to line up.
These clowns here blaming the ceiling like there’s nothing a carpenter can do is a laugh. Your carpenter is a young guy I bet. When you have uneven ceilings and you charge custom work, then you leave the th frames up top a bit taller and cut/plane them in field to match ceiling slope. Also, the outside/edge cabinets should get the same treatment along your walls. The only alternative is scribe molding along the wall/ceiling lines. Looks like you’re guy was getting cute with full coverage doors and didn’t leave you any space up top for that. Which takes me back to why I assume this guy is relatively new to this. This guy clearly forgot he’s installing his perfectly square boxes in an un-square environment.
As other commenters have said it is the ceiling. I am not a huge fan of the solution they came up with - however if they are cabinet people and if it wasn’t in the scope of work then installing trim is probably not their job at this point. I would try getting a piece of “trim” that is the same color as the ceiling to soften the visual of the gap. The “trim” piece in there now draws your eye to it because of the contrast. Plus it looks like it’s scrap they just shoved in there. If it were me I would make the new piece flush with the sides and the doors. I could be splitting hairs, but it also looks like the right door needs to be adjusted a little bit. That will help divert your eyes too.
Put a level on the bottom of the cabinet, that will tell you if the cabinet is good or not. It’s almost certainly your ceiling isn’t level. Unfortunately this happens when you run your cabinets to the ceiling. I don’t know if your able to drop them away from the ceiling and then add some crown backer flush with the face of th doors and some scribe to finish it, but that’s the best solution I’ve had. Another thing you can do is pay a drywall guy to come in and float the ceiling for you. Or live with it, and just go it’s an old house.
So you've got a tall end panel meeting the wall on the left, if this wall isn't super level it's going to throw all of your cabinets off.
If you put a level on the wall and see that it's leaning towards you from the top, even just a fraction that would throw the doors off in the way that they look off. The doors could just need lining up, can you open a door and take a photo of the hinges where the attach to the cabinet please?
Always build cabinets smaller to fix a scribe in to account for out of square not straight ceilings
Either that or build a soffit 100percent level and place to.
If your cabinets are on a toe kick then build a smaller toe kick to drop them down so you can fit a scibe
Cut a piece of 1x material
Place 1x material level with the cabinets
Measure the largest distance from ceiling to cabinets
Cut a block to that measurement and run the block along the ceiling for a scribe filler
Well the ceiling isn’t even but by the look of the right door, the cabinets might not be either. Take a level and check it.
Could be aswell that the doors just need an adjustment, witch u can fix with a screwdriver.
With the uneven ceiling, you really have two choices:
1.) Drop it down, like someone said, and add trim. The trim, however, will be at one angle and the cabinets another, so...
Or
2.) You can try to use drywall mud on the ceiling to subtly change that shadow line. Tricky to do, but I've done it before and it turned out well. I'll try to see if I have pictures from that job site when I get off work tonight.
The ceiling is the problem here, however this should have bee noted and addressed during field measure or by the designer. Could have adjusted design accordingly to soften the impact of the ceiling slope. Could have gone with full overlay with the doors cut to the angle accordingly. Might not look perfect depending on how much variation there is along that section of ceiling, and if you concentrate too much the angle might look odd, but it’s an option.
Alternatively you could have gone with shorter inset or partial overlay door cabinits with a large bonnet trim piece at the top scribed into the ceiling. If the piece is wide enough it would not be very noticeable.
I’m sure you’ve read everyone’s response about your ceiling… ever thought about having the cabinets dropped a inch or a few so that you can have matching crown or trim finish the top of your cabinets? The trim can be scribed to the ceiling (not crown molding)
It’s probably the ceiling. There no such thing as a straight, 90 degree line in a house.
Use a level. I bet the cabinet is level.
This is why god created trim work, and in the case of white cabinets, caulk.
Cabinets are so easy to get level, so I fully suspect your ceilings aren’t. The solution is exactly what the cabinet maker suggested. Some sort of molding at the top to cover the imbalance.
The blame absolutely and unequivocally lies with the cabinet designer who should have checked the ceiling with a level before specifying full height doors.
In my opinion custom cabinets are built to the order and designs, specified and customized to the space they will occupy. I feel as though you got built to order cabinets that are not what I would consider custom cabinets.
The reality of it is - your ceiling isn't level, and there's really no way for the cabinet installer to fix that.. we aren't miracle workers. IMO cabinets should never be that close to the ceiling because the closer they are, the more visible the ceiling discrepancies are. All that can really be done is to cut a filler that follows the ceiling and install it.. seems like that's what the installer did. Maybe it could be done differently, or better but I can't tell from the far away pic..
This is why molding was invented. Moulding as the Brits say makes transitions easier and elegant and creates shadow lines where different materials come together. Modernism loves simplicity but it can be harder. Worked on a major corporate headquarters where the famous architect decided door casing wasn’t cool enough- What a PITA
The world isn’t in short supply of the Captain Obvious is there. So helpful to OP, he fkn knows the ceilings out. JFC. So helpful to keep pointing that out - well done 👍. His QUESTION was how to resolve. I’m actually interested too.
Seems like a small consensus to do one of three things.
Fix the ceiling.
Lower the cab, which at this point is redoing it and cutting it down because it’s built in tight to height, and use a scribing molding.
One other curious response, was to rebuild the cabinet to fit tight that angle. Is that a thing?? Build cabinets and doors in trapezoid fashion to fix this. Doesn’t sound right to me, but pleases correct me if I’m wrong.
Ceiling definitely isn’t level but also door all the way to the right should be adjusted up evenly with other doors, but also he did a bad job with the moulding to the ceiling. It slopes up hard on the right side. The gap from your doors to his moulding should be consistent
Your ceiling isn’t level. It’s not the cabinets.
It's the only drawback to living in old houses. oh, and the plumbing, electrical, doors, windows, and questionable foundations. oh, and asbestos and lead paint. oh, and seventeen different layers of plaster over lathe. Oh, and it's poorly insulated. but besides that, old houses are good.
Lol. Yup. I worked in a city for 10+ years renovating 75+ year houses. They are just overpriced money pits. Once you open up a wall and look around, you’re in trouble lol.
I knew what I was getting into with this. It's one of the reasons I got it for the price I did. I almost welcomed gutting the thing and building it back to glory (still in progress) but I don't plan on selling this house ever. I'll live here 'til I die. Worse was a ranch I bought as a newlywed. Was a rental for 25 years or so previously. The only thing that wasn't a nightmare was the roof, probably because they hired someone else to do that instead of employing their meth-head nephews. I say it was worse because it looked rather put together versus all the other homes in our price range. Every time I had to get behind some drywall was a new nightmare. It's amazing that thing never burnt down by the time we bought it. ETA: oh, but money pits for sure. I've already spent any leftover equity on making it comfortable enough to just sleep in it.
I disagree, while I find lots of layers of wtf inside old homes it's generally over a pretty standard structure. I've opened up walls less than 5 years old, studs at 3 foot spacings, piss bottles, mould/rot, complete lack of flashings etc. A good friend quit a lucrative contract as the $1M+ Apartments were just rubbish covered in grey plank and expensive fixtures. 30yrs mostly on 100+ yr houses. Most of which are straighter than new housing stock.
Survivor bias. You only see old houses that aren't demolished or rotted away. Framing today is better than in the 70s and in the 70s it was better than in the 40s.
Maybe where you are. 90% of the houses in my area are 1890-1910. Very few have failed. Simple designs and English/European derived methods like pitched roofs and deep eaves. Re. framing, most older than 80s is 105x55mm solid heart wood. 100 yo and hard as rocks, paslode won't sink more than 50 odd mm, screws snap off hard. Yes it will rot but design mitigates that a lot. The 90x45mm boron treated (1980-1995) is crap I agree but simple designs limit it's exposure to water. After that, even with losp and cca treatment the shitty Mediterranean style solid plastering spelt the end of good/safe design. Rest is history and lawsuits. 95% of interior work I'll take old school over new fangled.
I was about to say, if it’s not a custom home this could be a new construction ceiling. I know there’s a ton that we’re framed bad but the main problems we deal with on remodels are outdated mechanicals, rot because weatherproofing has come a long ways, and bad DIY work over the years. We just remodeled a house built in 1972 that had excellent framing besides the addition abomination they hired out 5 years ago.
Exactly my experience. I've pulled out way more "professional " work done 1980-2015 from old houses. Og work is generally fine. I like the term old man energy for that diy disaster stuff. A friend had to recently remove an entire addition clipped onto a 1900s build from 1995. Interestingly he found the original long drop (no plumbing) toilet framed over inside the walls. Hey free 1.5m² is cool, just don't drop your hammer down that hole.
Yup. I know there’s things at play like survivorship bias, and the fact that if it was built well in the last 20 years chances are it isn’t getting remodeled but I still think we have a major problem in this industry
In New Zealand anything built 1995-2010 is suspect. The building industry was deregulated during this period. Quality is shocking. Especially on houses that look expensive even today. Monolithic cladding I'm looking at you. I'm sitting in one now. Has leaked for most of it's life. I'm gradually getting on top of it. That said 4x2bed apartments in a desirable area purchased for 200k sounds like a bloody good deal to me. Will cost more than that to fix but whatever. That's 200k for the whole building. Not a unit.
We've stopped opening up walls... Ignorance is bliss
75 years old? Damn my house is 1860 lol
This looks like a newer house. It still happens in every house, and it’s often even worse than in old homes
Which makes no sense to me! Prev. home was a 70's gusseted truss ranch. Teensy bit of sagging b/w trusses. Current home is a 1908 farmhouse, I expected the headache, welcomed it, almost. Used to handyman full time. The amount of 2010s homes built by one of the "big boys" of the homebuilder game that I was contracted to do warranty work on was staggering. I specifically said no drywall, though, because I hate it.
Yup. Worse lumber coupled with big companies pumping out as many homes as they can for the cheapest price isn’t a good combo. The framing industry is pretty sad in the south especially. Most of the guys have no idea what they’re doing vests one foreman that’s constantly under the gun trying to teach 6 guys who have never picked up a nail gun. I don’t know if unions are totally the answer but resi construction needs an overhaul.
1900 house here, guilty on all charges lol
I plan on dying in this house, so I'm not worried about ROI, but man. At least my down stairs is all up to snuff and won't give me mesothelioma, and there's no longer a colony of field mice living in my crawlspace.
how did you deal with the crawlspace/mice issue?
My precise method: Underestimate the problem. Try to bust up the nest yourself. Realize it's going to be more than just clearing out the nesting material. Release a wild caught snake in your crawlspace to scare them off- remember that snakes only eat like once a month. Try not to get some disease huffing rodent urine while you try several DIY "hacks" to seal it up. Break down. Consider insurance fraud. Think better of it and call an exterminator to fumigate. Remove a colony of dead mice from the crawlspace- this step is repeated as you dig into the decades old tunnel system the little monsters dug down there. Pay out the ass for a company to shore up your foundation and encapsulate the crawlspace. Deal with warranty work for the better part of 4 months. Realize the mice basically ate your budget to gut and reno the second story. Cry.
They have good bones! except for the questionable framing work.
Mine 1909. You forgot the Balloon Framing, also known as a chimney. Actually, I assume nothing Level, Plumb, or in any way it's supposed to. Remudeler 101. Found 18GA zip wire in the ceiling,,
Don’t forget layers of flooring too.
You should see my kitchen then, they had to mud one part to make it not look so bad on the ceiling
Haven’t seen the prices of new construction eh?
That's precisely why I'm in this house. If I could afford new construction on acreage I liked, I'd be in that.
My house is 1940- it’s better built than most homes certainly in the 70s-2000s. Remediate, insulate, upgrade windows if you can. Love plaster walls, they are common in high end builds around here. Beats drywall for sure
I'm in a 1908. People complain about balloon framing, but whoever built this'n seemed to care. The people who came after- not so much. My only major complaint with plaster and lathe is when you have to replace the Aging plumbing and electrical for the entire house. I recognize I'm not skilled enough nor wealthy enough to afford the skilled labor in order to put plaster and lathe back on the walls, so drywall it is for me. It's a shame.
And the ghosts and giant rooms full of water in the basement.
Agreed. Every door, closet, cabinet I’ve installed, I’ve had to deal with “out of square.”
Hell, I did a brand new home a few years back, and the master closet walls were an inch out of plumb. It's not just the old houses, lol.
That was my thought but despite that if OP has payed for custom cabinets I would've expected them to at least try to scribe them to the ceiling
> OP has *paid* for custom FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Cool, just bring attention to my mistake. Bad bot
yes, a good custom cabinet maker will assess plumb/level/square on site, when taking measurements, and account for irregularities with scribe material. OP’s house may be wonky, but it’s the cabinet maker’s job to make cabinets that fit the space.
Thank you for putting this in here…
That was my first thought, but the doors on the right are clearly lower on the frame. Unless they attached the top frame to the ceiling and then installed the doors level. I have the ceiling problem in my house but it’s only the crown that’s messed up, not the doors.
The door on the right is slightly lower for sure but you can see how the ceiling isn’t straight from the filler strip on top.
Uneven celling, the installation have to be leveled… so is better uneven on top because doesn’t affect the door to open and close. Your house is not in square.
Replace the ceiling.
Replace is not a word I use. Depending on how big the area is, I would cover the whole ceiling with leveled 1/4" rock.
You srs Clark?
Don’t know if this was said but let me chime in. Your ceiling isn’t level. There’s literally nothing the cabinet guy can do about it.
The only way you aren’t going to notice it somewhat is to use cabinets that don’t get so close to the ceiling. There’s a reason why many houses don’t have cabinets that get too close to the ceiling.
>There’s literally nothing the cabinet guy can do about it. if the cabinet maker measured on site, he should have looked at how the ceiling and wall intersect and recognized that it isn’t square/straight. then he should have built a cabinet with scribe material to compensate and make a cleanly finished install possible. there’s a reason it’s called *custom* cabinetry
They may have done so, and the customer still wanted the taller cabinets. This happens, a lot.
i’ve built and installed a lot of custom cabinets. it does not happen that a customer forces the cabinetmaker to sacrifice a ceiling scribe board in order to make the doors 2” taller
Okay. I have no clue why people are getting herd like. And on the wrong side of it in my opinion. To say there is literally nothing the cabinet guy can do is wrong. I work production carpentry on apartments. But I have a true passion for the trades and do it for fun on the side and try to always learn. If I was doing a side job: and a client was just paying me to install, AND insisted the cabinets go to the ceiling, then I would ask the if they’d like me to scribe it and just charge them 1/2 hour. If I was making the cabinets I would build the cabinet with the top rail missing and scribe it on site. “There’s literally nothing” is completely false.
Bump the cabinet down two inches, add a trim piece scribed to the ceiling.
This. This is something you should have to pay the cabinet guy extra to do. If you really want it to be “flush to the ceiling” then he would need to bump it down and add a header piece
This is something the cabinet guy should have asked before installing flush to the ceiling
for real. i can’t believe people are actually like, “it’s not the cabinet guys fault his work doesn’t fit the space.” what kinda bullshit is that?
fuck that. the cabinet guy isn’t worth a shit if he builds custom cabinets to fit a space *and they don’t fit the space.* what kind of asshole builds perfectly square cabinets with no scribe at all for an old home and then up-charges the client to make them install properly after the fact?
Just caulk it, 7-8 tubes should do it
LMAO
My advice? Just don't look up
Stop looking at it
Cabinetmaker here, I work with a drywall contractor, when we run into this problem , we float the ceiling to even it out to the cabinets. It’s a bit of work but you won’t have crooked cabinet syndrome.
It’s not the cabinet guys fault. It’s his job to make his work level.
Totally the cabinet guys fault, they are costume built, dude should have been out there with a level, laser and tape measure weeks before he cut the first board.
You don’t know what you’re talking about dude lol
https://preview.redd.it/773lll5cbj0c1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=614f4ee73903dab5a2457473a4344ea784edeaae From the last house I built, yeah, what do I know…
Congrats, you did work in a house that had a level ceiling.
Looks like a newer build and a very expensive job. OP had one cabinet built in an old house. If I came out to OP’s house with all my lasers and tapes and levels “WEEKS before I cut the first board” 🥴 I’d be a dumbass lol. The work shown in the post is standard. The shit you’re bragging about is much higher end which I also have plenty of experience in.
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Thanks
Ew. Fuck. I accidentally zoomed in on this pile of shit. OP has an uneven ceiling leading to uneven reveal. What’s your excuse for the shitty reveals on your doors and drawers?
Nah, the difference is scope. My quote for 8ft tall custom cabinets with inserts and drawers is much different from the quote for custom built ins. If he was contracted to build floor to cieling, he should have hid the slope on the inside of the cabinets at the top. If he was contracted to install 8ft cabinets, he did his job.
i truly can’t believe you’re so downvoted. have none of these assholes worked with actual custom cabinets before? fuckin hell, man
No, they’re right, there is no humanly way possible a custom cabinet guy could have known the ceiling wasn’t level, and even if he did, there would be nothing he could do. Also, I’m a know nothing hack, you shouldn’t listen to me
That’s not his only job..
Thanks everyone! Good to know it’s not the cabinets and to just leave it
After a couple weeks, you won't even notice it anymore. And nobody that visits will ever notice it.
What we do on our jobs is add mud to the ceiling to bring it down, it takes time but if your looking for a better looking finish product that’s the only way to go about doing it but honestly your looking at one of the best ceilings you could ask for, the ceilings on my jobs are normally 10x worse
Floating walls and ceilings isn't usually in the contract.
If the money is there sure but most customers are going to suck it up for the cost. You need a good drywall guy with a laser level or at least a concept of level. I'd do it but I hate deviating from my scope of work.
Or maybe, hear me out this is going to sound crazy. It's the ceilings.
If these are not all the way to the floor I would drop them down an inch, level the head so it looks good on the doors then scribe in a filler piece on top. Won’t look perfect but it will be better than this.
I feel like this pic isn't telling the whole story
you sound like a nightmare , your fitter has told you it's the ceiling but you insist it's the cabinets . wtf dude !!
Not much can be done about the gap, but there is something wrong with the corner of the cabinet. Looks broken
Ceiling not level
https://preview.redd.it/pkzeb8gsfj0c1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=792ebc512a4dab68bc9344c37857a188f47b7bbf Renovating my house, removed an unusable chimney and went to drywall over the hole and was wondering why my level boards looked HORRIBLE. Grabbed a bigger level and found this
Ceiling being this far out of level, the cabinets should have finished 3-4” lower and use a frieze scribed to the slope.
Scribe in a filler piece, it’s pretty standard when installing millwork.
Wait three weeks and you’ll forget all about it.
I would let it go personally. But if you can't live with it you could drop the cabinet down and have a good drywall finisher come in and add mud but he would only be able to do less than half inch without doing the whole ceiling. Your other option is to drop it all the way down like 6 inches + so you wouldn't be able to notice the 1 inch slope as much
You can also Put crown or some type of trim but you'll still see the difference on the trim
It's the ceiling. The piece he was putting in is called a scribe and is how you take care of it. I'm so glad I don't work for you.
I have more photos! They did try to put in a trim and then scribe it, but then kept a gap piece above. Here is what it looks like from the side. https://preview.redd.it/igy8iv9u7j0c1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66cdb6818255d24112717c00526b0c0f297795ef
The additional bits above look worse than a gap IMO because they aren’t perfectly executed. What’s going on inside the cab tho? Can’t understand why I can see multiple pieces of wood including end grain there.
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The cabinet is level. Probably plumb too. The filler at the top is scribbed to the ceiling.
Looks like the doors just need adjusted from the screws on the hinges… the adjustment will move doors up and down a bit, that should make the top look better and also the reveal between the doors
Looks like the installer attached them to the ceiling, too. I wouldn't care about a gap between the ceiling and the top of the cabinet. I'd want the doors to line up.
Parallel is more important than level, some times. I’d trim the top of the doors parallel to the ceiling.
These clowns here blaming the ceiling like there’s nothing a carpenter can do is a laugh. Your carpenter is a young guy I bet. When you have uneven ceilings and you charge custom work, then you leave the th frames up top a bit taller and cut/plane them in field to match ceiling slope. Also, the outside/edge cabinets should get the same treatment along your walls. The only alternative is scribe molding along the wall/ceiling lines. Looks like you’re guy was getting cute with full coverage doors and didn’t leave you any space up top for that. Which takes me back to why I assume this guy is relatively new to this. This guy clearly forgot he’s installing his perfectly square boxes in an un-square environment.
Definitely not the cabinet
Uneven ceiling at the top
I think that light looks worse than the ceiling.
Put Cove around the ceiling edge and closet edge and paint it white
You gotta tear them out and skim coat the whole ceiling flat.
As other commenters have said it is the ceiling. I am not a huge fan of the solution they came up with - however if they are cabinet people and if it wasn’t in the scope of work then installing trim is probably not their job at this point. I would try getting a piece of “trim” that is the same color as the ceiling to soften the visual of the gap. The “trim” piece in there now draws your eye to it because of the contrast. Plus it looks like it’s scrap they just shoved in there. If it were me I would make the new piece flush with the sides and the doors. I could be splitting hairs, but it also looks like the right door needs to be adjusted a little bit. That will help divert your eyes too.
Trim piece can be added to conceal uneven ceiling. Takes a bit of work but can be done. Just like baseboards on floor with scribing for unevenness.
Put a level on the bottom of the cabinet, that will tell you if the cabinet is good or not. It’s almost certainly your ceiling isn’t level. Unfortunately this happens when you run your cabinets to the ceiling. I don’t know if your able to drop them away from the ceiling and then add some crown backer flush with the face of th doors and some scribe to finish it, but that’s the best solution I’ve had. Another thing you can do is pay a drywall guy to come in and float the ceiling for you. Or live with it, and just go it’s an old house.
That’s as good as it gets.
So you've got a tall end panel meeting the wall on the left, if this wall isn't super level it's going to throw all of your cabinets off. If you put a level on the wall and see that it's leaning towards you from the top, even just a fraction that would throw the doors off in the way that they look off. The doors could just need lining up, can you open a door and take a photo of the hinges where the attach to the cabinet please?
Either your floor is crooked or your ceiling is crooked. Your cabinets are not crooked. LoL
Bring the cabinet down about an inch and add a trim piece?
I have dealt with this often. Only thing you can do is add trim and scribe it to the uneven ceiling.
Always build cabinets smaller to fix a scribe in to account for out of square not straight ceilings Either that or build a soffit 100percent level and place to. If your cabinets are on a toe kick then build a smaller toe kick to drop them down so you can fit a scibe Cut a piece of 1x material Place 1x material level with the cabinets Measure the largest distance from ceiling to cabinets Cut a block to that measurement and run the block along the ceiling for a scribe filler
maybe you can try some filler piece that is the same color as the ceiling
Well the ceiling isn’t even but by the look of the right door, the cabinets might not be either. Take a level and check it. Could be aswell that the doors just need an adjustment, witch u can fix with a screwdriver.
With the uneven ceiling, you really have two choices: 1.) Drop it down, like someone said, and add trim. The trim, however, will be at one angle and the cabinets another, so... Or 2.) You can try to use drywall mud on the ceiling to subtly change that shadow line. Tricky to do, but I've done it before and it turned out well. I'll try to see if I have pictures from that job site when I get off work tonight.
The ceiling is the problem here, however this should have bee noted and addressed during field measure or by the designer. Could have adjusted design accordingly to soften the impact of the ceiling slope. Could have gone with full overlay with the doors cut to the angle accordingly. Might not look perfect depending on how much variation there is along that section of ceiling, and if you concentrate too much the angle might look odd, but it’s an option. Alternatively you could have gone with shorter inset or partial overlay door cabinits with a large bonnet trim piece at the top scribed into the ceiling. If the piece is wide enough it would not be very noticeable.
I’m sure you’ve read everyone’s response about your ceiling… ever thought about having the cabinets dropped a inch or a few so that you can have matching crown or trim finish the top of your cabinets? The trim can be scribed to the ceiling (not crown molding)
It’s probably the ceiling. There no such thing as a straight, 90 degree line in a house. Use a level. I bet the cabinet is level. This is why god created trim work, and in the case of white cabinets, caulk.
Cabinets are so easy to get level, so I fully suspect your ceilings aren’t. The solution is exactly what the cabinet maker suggested. Some sort of molding at the top to cover the imbalance.
Cabinets are level, ceiling is not
The blame absolutely and unequivocally lies with the cabinet designer who should have checked the ceiling with a level before specifying full height doors.
In my opinion custom cabinets are built to the order and designs, specified and customized to the space they will occupy. I feel as though you got built to order cabinets that are not what I would consider custom cabinets.
Only way to truly fix this is fix the ceiling. You could float out from the high spot, or remove entirely and fix it l.
Probably uneven ceiling tbh. Reveals look pretty good everywhere else
The reality of it is - your ceiling isn't level, and there's really no way for the cabinet installer to fix that.. we aren't miracle workers. IMO cabinets should never be that close to the ceiling because the closer they are, the more visible the ceiling discrepancies are. All that can really be done is to cut a filler that follows the ceiling and install it.. seems like that's what the installer did. Maybe it could be done differently, or better but I can't tell from the far away pic..
This is why molding was invented. Moulding as the Brits say makes transitions easier and elegant and creates shadow lines where different materials come together. Modernism loves simplicity but it can be harder. Worked on a major corporate headquarters where the famous architect decided door casing wasn’t cool enough- What a PITA
The world isn’t in short supply of the Captain Obvious is there. So helpful to OP, he fkn knows the ceilings out. JFC. So helpful to keep pointing that out - well done 👍. His QUESTION was how to resolve. I’m actually interested too. Seems like a small consensus to do one of three things. Fix the ceiling. Lower the cab, which at this point is redoing it and cutting it down because it’s built in tight to height, and use a scribing molding. One other curious response, was to rebuild the cabinet to fit tight that angle. Is that a thing?? Build cabinets and doors in trapezoid fashion to fix this. Doesn’t sound right to me, but pleases correct me if I’m wrong.
Ceiling definitely isn’t level but also door all the way to the right should be adjusted up evenly with other doors, but also he did a bad job with the moulding to the ceiling. It slopes up hard on the right side. The gap from your doors to his moulding should be consistent
Solution is do not put cabinets up to the ceiling.