Anyway, the new contractor came in and immediately saw a huge problem--our ceilings are not in fact 8 feet, but only about 7 ft 10 inches or so. And we have 42 inch upper cabs. By the time the 3 cm granite counters are in, we will have approximately 14 3/4 inches between the countertop and the bottoms of the upper cabs. Recommended space is 18 inches minimum. The new contractor said 36 inches would have been much better; we won't even be able to have a blender sitting on the counter without it hitting the upper cab. :(

The kitchen designer said our contractor told him we have 8 feet ceilings. The designer never came to our house to measure (strike one two and three), so he just went by what he was told. Our contractor said he warned us of this problem, but we supposedly still insisted on 42 inch cabs. That's absolutely false. We were never told it wouldn't work or that it wouldn't be a good idea.

Is there anything we can do short of having to order all new uppers? Is this the contractor's fault or our fault? We're so disheartened and sad. Those cabs were a lot of money.

Thanks for any advice.

Standard base cab height is 34-3/4"+1-1/4" (3cm) counter + 18" backsplash + 42" uppers = 96" (8'). If your ceilings are 7'10" "or so" you'd have a 16"+ back splash. Not disastrous. Keep in mind the wall cabinets are only 12" deep, the bases twice that. Blender good.

The larger question is the aesthetics of the uppers going right to the ceiling with no molding or soffit?

Otherwise, no easy fix here.

Having only a short clearance between the base and wall would be irritating to me. It's a functional and aesthetic issue. And yes, not having molding at the top would also not be desirable either. Molding finishes a kitchen off and gives it dimension and detail.

I knew something looked off when the cabs first went in, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Now I know. :(

What troubles me is that the contractor is lying about it by saying he insisted he told us this would be an issue, and that we supposedly said we didn't mind. That never happened.

The contractor may not be lying, just mistaken and may be thinking of a conversation he had with someone else. The issue you have is that no one is going to take responsibility, which leaves you with the expense of any fix. Did you sign a document agreeing to the 42"?

On the bright side. My cabs are only 17" off the counter (from the light rail to the granite) because I wanted to keep the shelves just a touch lower. It's fine. If you could get that distance to be 16",as Clarion calculated, it wouldn't be what you expected, but it could be workable. In my old kitchen, the cabs were only 15 or 16" from the counter. Sayde doesn't have 18" under her vintage cabs. I think this 18" as standard is fairly recent.

In fact, "The best height for a wall cabinet is 14-15" above the counter top"!

What I would verify if I were you is how the doors are going to be adjusted and who will pay for that. Door styles like slab might be fixable, but I would think most doors are not and replacements would be required.

By the way, I just measured, from the top of my countertop to the bottom of the light rail of the upper cabinets is 16 1/2". I wouldn't want any less than that or my coffee maker wouldn't fit under the upper cabinets.

!8 inches is required for cabinets adjacent to many gas stoves and cook tops, epsecilly ones with higher BTU burners.

"In fact, "The best height for a wall cabinet is 14-15" above the counter top"!"

The commercial world is NOT a good place to look for residential kitchen layout ideas.

Ever notice everything is up off the hard floor?

It is so a hose with hot water can be used to clean.

Open shelves are also used very commonly.

Do you want to be cleaning them (and the items on them) all the time like in a commercial kitchen?

Thanks for that link. Interesting that 14-15 inches is considered best. However, while it may be best in terms of being able to reach into upper cabs, 14-15 inches won't be able to store a blender or mixer or microwave on the countertop!

I have just read on some KD's website that open shelves may be quite time-saving for stuff you use every day (stuff that gets cleaned daily anyway) as you don't have to open and close the door all the time.

I have been thinking for years how inefficient the 18" distance is. It is not high enough to place anything "meaningful" on the counter under them, but it makes it hard to use anything but the first shelf of the upper cabinet. I am not short (5'6") and I find reaching the back of the second shelf quite "painful". :-) My Vitamix and SodaStream do not fit under the wall cabinets, the food processor can be "stored" but cannot be used there and has to be pulled forward anyway. The mugs and plates waiting to be washed would "fit" just the same with the 15" height.

I am pretty sure that I am going to go with ~16" for my kitchen remodel.

Regarding "18 inches is required for cabinets adjacent to many gas stoves and cook tops, epsecilly ones with higher BTU burners."

For that application, 18" is not enough IMHO. Code or no code, I'd never place them that close to the cooktop.

But they don't have to be the same height as all other cabinets. I am pretty sure I have seen pix of kitchens with upper cabs around the cooktop much shorter than the rest.

OP,

I hope you have or will fire your KD. As far as I know, it is (sort of) a "rule of thumb" that a KD should re-measure everything, no matter who gave the original measurements. :-)

Well that's if you have a competent KD and contractor, of which I apparently have neither. ;) And at the time, I was too stupid to question why the KD never came to our house. If only I knew then what I know now.

If someone or you are using an appliance you don't want to have to move it just so someone can get something out of the cabinet.

Therefore, I do not fault the KD at all for designing using those measurements or for designing the kitchen in the way that the contractor indicated that he wanted it to be designed. You may have been the ultimate inhabitant of the kitchen, but the contractor was the customer here.

If I'm mistaken on who hired and paid for the KD and the cabinets directly, and it was you, then this was a curious transaction all the way around. If you are the one who hired the KD and also hired the contractor, then you were acting as the GC for the job, and that comes with the responsibility to both measure the space yourself, understand the implications of the design, and to double check all orders for accuracy.

We paid the contractor, and he paid the KD/cabinet company. The contractor said he acts as the 'go-between' between the cabinet place and the homeowner as a courtesy. We never even talked to or met the KD until after this debacle occurred.

We paid the contractor, and he paid the KD/cabinet company. The contractor said he acts as the 'go-between' between the cabinet place and the homeowner as a courtesy. We never even talked to or met the KD until after this debacle occurred.

First of all, you'd have to get all new doors.
Second, the hacked cabinets would need new drillings for the hinges - sometimes this requires special drill or router bits and guides.
Third, there's a hanging rail up there that needs to be correctly removed and reinstalled in a new place.
Fourth, the cabinet top would need to be reattached somehow.

Its not impossible but its not simple or cheap. It just feel crazy when you were contemplating re-ordering some of them because they didn't fit properly from side to side.

In your height calculations Remember to allow for:
--- a little bit for having not level ceilings. Usually this is covered by something like using a two piece crown that has some adjustibility.
--- The height of the crown.
--- The height of the light rail.
--- The height of any under-cabinet lighting.

Here are some reference measurements for a few countertop appliances.

I love this blender but it's 16 1/2" tall. I like the matching color drink mixer too, but its 21.5" tall. (who knew there was so much mint green available?) An Oster is almost 14" as is a Hamilton Beach.

A nine cup Cuisinart is about 13" but the 14 cup is almost 16" tall. The matching KitchenAid is a whopping 16.5" tall.

Kitchen aid artisan mixer is 16.4" tall. A Westinghouse is 15.5" while a Breville Scraper is 14.5" tall.

A Jura Impressa coffee/espresso maker is only 15" tall, but hey its also a heart stopping $2.3k. A cuisinart is around 14" tall but it needs a lotta clearance to put water into the top. A melita 10 cup is 16" tall, and a Keurig is about 15" tall.

So would you just suggest ordering all new uppers then, instead of cutting?

My starting position would be that the three strikes - wrong widths, wrong heights and that the cabinets were already installed - even tho the installer knew the heights weren't going to work out - is enough to justify new uppers provided at the contractors expense.

In your place, I would hold the contractor responsible to replace with new wall cabinets of correct heights and widths with removal of the current cabinets plus installation of the new replacement ones. If pushed, I'd offer to pay up to 20% of the replacement materials at his cost.

I would have him produce the measurements of the actual room, have the kd out to remeasure and validate those measurements at the contractors' expense to make darned sure those measurements were correct and any other materials needed (like a second piece for the crown) were also on the order list. I'd have everyone sign it as correct - including myself.

I don't know what other issues you've had with this contractor, but if there's a lot of them, you may want to talk with them about agreeing to terminate the contract with delivery of those replacements together with any other materials already purchased and see where y'all are with each other financially and just pay up and stop.

This is a much bigger argument than just the cabinets and a distinct disincentive for the contractor to do anything at all. But I'm not sure I'd want them to have the opportunity of doing more stuff wrong. So, if you really feel you can't trust them to re-install correctly, it may be time to call in the legal people to help figure out what to do.

We planned on minimal molding which goes well with our style - just a half inch. When we learned that the height was actually 95", we reduced the molding to just a 1/4".

I'm short with a short reach and at 16" I can reach the first and items toward the front of the second shelf. At 18" counter to cabinet bottom, I would only be able to reach the bottom shelf without a stool.

The blender fits:

We ended the light rail early to make room for the Kitchen Aid mixer under the cabinet to the right of the sink.

We like the no molding look and don't feel it makes things look cheap:

Molding was created partly to deal with tolerances and things not being made perfectly straight. One needs better workmanship to get away with no moldings.

Even if you had had 8' ceilings, wall height minus counter and cabinets leaves 18". If your molding was larger than 2" you would have had less than 16" from counter to cabinet bottom and perhaps even less with a light rail unless the light rail was included in the 42" upper height.

Unless your molding is pretty thin and you don't have a light rail (or the 42" cabinet height includes the light rail), with 7' 10" ceilings, it seems like even 14 3/4" is more than you will have under the uppers. It could be less than 14".

Since we have an island rangetop, we have no safety issue of distance of the bottom of the uppers from the rangetop.

Where I have my MW, there is only 12" between uppers and lowers (plus the uppers are much deeper) and on the other side I have 29" clearance so I have room for my hot plate and big canner. On the sink side I have 17", the baking center has 19.5" clearance (actually has a lower base, not a raised uppers). My ceiling is lower than yours, and varies almost 2". We leveled the floor and that created the ceiling problem. Love old houses!

Ab.so.lute.ly. not.
For all the reasons clearly stated above. I'm willing to bet they haven't even mentioned those issues, have they? And after the chopping, you'd get, "well, of course you'll have to buy new doors..."

My ceilings are 8'. Sometimes. They bow and sag and raise. And this is only a '74 ranch. Between the original owner/builder and my STBX GC DH's "good enough for now" philosophy, I am going to have to [ahem] retrofit my stacked look with 11" high cabinets just to fit them under the ceiling. That's where my molding will come in! To hide crappy workmanship.

enough about me.
Stand by your guns.

I am sorry, I did not mean it the way it came out.
I didn't realize that OP's KD was hired by the GC.

BTW, what I said was a quote. That is what my first KD said (when we started working on our remodel 4 years ago) after I gave her the measurements and one side of the kitchen "appeared" to be longer than the other side, though I tried hard, LOL. But I don't think she meant the case when she worked directly for a GC, not the home owner.

I am curious though. If the kitchen is "local", not in a different state, wouldn't a KD be better off visiting it to get an idea about the overall "feel" of the house, the lighting and stuff like that?

That said, it's all about how you want to use the uppers in the area in question:

For fitting appliances underneath, you definitely want to go 18". This also holds true if you have no countertop in your kitchen without uppers marching along above it - set them too low and it creates an unpleasant cave-like feel.

For using the uppers for storage for food prep or baking supplies, going lower can be very beneficial, especially if you are shorter. I'm medium height and I still love having the uppers about 15.5" above the countertop -- I can reach everything and no shelf area goes largely unused, as they do in the uppers that are set higher. But I have open areas of countertop with nothing above them where I use Kitchenaid mixer, blender, etc.

I personally consider the regular use of stools in the kitchen to reach upper storage a really dangerous practice (cats, kids, wet floors = spinal injury waiting to happen). I'm also of the opinion that immediate workspace storage like upper cabinetry needs to be as accessible as possible to make the best use of its location, and lesser-used cookware, holiday platters, etc can go elsewhere, where the stuff won't waste valuable working real estate.

But there is truly no "right" way to do it; it's all about personal preference, body height, and work habits. Stating global imperatives about the height of uppers from the countertop will get you in as much forum trouble as declaring that shoes should always or should never be worn inside the house. ;-)

Our cab manufacturer only offers 36 or 42 inch uppers. The 36s will actually look nicer I think, because it will allow us to beef up the crown molding a bit. Right now there's just an inch or so up there with the 42s and it looks skimpy. Our cab style is a more formal, traditional raised panel, so heavier crown suits it.

I'm with you, though, I would like to see how this kitchen came out. I went back to try to find out what the previous problem in Laila619's kitchen was. I found a reference to a layout problem, but no specifics. Even using Google it can be hard to track down threads. I did see that the contractor built a shower for her with no waterproofing between the tile and the wallboard. Good grief. It's possible that Laila619 isn't finished due to all the problems. We know someone in town whose kitchen nightmare was so traumatic and thorough that her kitchen isn't finished two years later. I think she might be in a legal fight with the contractor. Whatever it is, this woman doesn't want to talk about it. So sad.