Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms - "Hanging" new kitchen cabinets.....

I've done kitchens before, and hung the wall cabinets first. Worked fine. BUT, I didn't have wall cabinets that went all the way down to the countertop.

In the new kitchen I have a corner base with a corner wall cabinet that has an appliance tambor. The wall unit is one piece, so it sits on the countertop and goes up to the 90" wall cabinet height.

This is on an L-shaped area and there are 2 wall cabinets on the short side of the L, immediately adjacent to one another that'll go down to the counter. On the long side of the L, the rest of the 12 feet of cabinets is regular wall cabinets.

What's the best way to set this up? Since I need the countertop in place to set the first (corner) wall cabinets, and the countertop has to be fully supported (12' x 4' solid surface), do I just set all the base cabinets then do the wall?

I considered finding out EXACTLY how thick the countertop is, cutting a piece of plywood the size of the corner, the same thickness as the countertop, place the corner cabinet in it's spot but NOT anchored, hang at least one cabinet in each direction from the corner, then move the corner up a bit so the "real" countertop can be slide under when the time comes... Seems more difficult, and prone to error, but I don't know how difficult it'll be to put several wall cabinets up with the base cabinets in place...

Ideas?

Since you will have a wall unit touching the counter top, I would install the base cabinets and counter top first. Remove the doors from the wall cabinets and install the wall cabinets. This way, the corner unit can sit on the counter top and the other wall cabinets can be aligned to it. Protect the counter top with padding while hanging the wall cabinets. Hope this helps. Good luck with your project.

Cool. That seemed like the most accurate way to me too. I'll just make a short t-bar to hold the wall cabinets above the countertop and it shouldn't be much of a problem....

The "real" fun will be leveling. In a 110-year-old house, the floor isn't bad, and I did some leveling in the middle, and got the underlayment to match up exactly with the original wood floor that we'll be transitioning on to. But overall it still goes downhill a bit.

I also added floor jacks and beams in the basement to make sure we don't get any sagging from the 6-foot-wide refrigerator/freezer or the 8-foot tall, 12-foot wide set of pantries. I'll also put something under the island for a bit of support too.

Find the highest spot on the floor in the base cabinet area. Mark a level line on the wall where the top edge of the base cabinet frames will touch the wall and shim the base cabinets to the mark.