The Angles Among Us
The beauty of being a pessimist is that you’ll never assume anything is done correctly. You’ll double-check every detail that could affect the fit of the countertops you’re measuring, and assume all the so-called “craftsmen” who went before are a bunch of hacks who could care less about things like squares, levels, straight edges, etc.
If the pessimistic templater is fortunate enough to find some walls squared and cabinets set level, square and plumb he thinks to himself, “My lucky day – a rare bird indeed.” He isn’t fooled, and knows it won’t last.
A pessimistic attitude is especially helpful when it comes to the geometry of countertops. The pessimist is never going to be the guy who tape-measures up a job and assumes all the corners are going to be 90°.
Length and width are so easy an optimist could do them, but tell that same happy guy to accurately figure out a couple of oblique angles and he’s going to have a tougher time. Informing him that a 1° angle error on a 12’ run of countertops results in the far end of the piece being 2 1/2” in front of or behind its intended position might make him cry. But it’s true.
Dealing with angles realistically – making no assumptions and only moving forward with what you can prove digitally or physically – can create well-fitting pieces and smooth installs. The trouble begins when we try to figure out the size and shape of a piece without a digital or hard template.
You say you’ve never tried to lay out a kitchen with just a tape measure and a 2’ square? You’ve hardly lived! Most of us who started in countertops in the 1990s began our measuring careers with a combination of stick templates and that trusted tape measure.
At some point during our template travels we ran out of luan sticks or hot glue and were forced to truly “measure-up” a kitchen. Installing a tape-measured, U-shaped kitchen with full-height backsplash can teach you a lot about how crucial angles are and, in hindsight, make you really glad for digital-templating systems.
Let’s go over some simple lessons on good templating.
Taking a 2’ square and putting it on the inside corner of a back wall or a cabinet intersection will not necessarily give you the correct angle for a run of countertops. Drywall is usually feathered into a corner, sometimes severely. The inside of a lazy-susan cabinet can be skewed any which way and may not line up with the run of cabinets as a whole.
Checking square on a standard L-shaped kitchen is best done with the A-squared + B-squared = C-squared, or 3,4,5 method. I’d usually measure 4’ on the back wall and 3’ on a return wall, taking into account the feathered drywall. Plus-or-minus 5’ across will give you how much to vary your square cut.
You can use any set of measurements that fit this formula, the longer the better. This method will be more-accurate than the square, but still not perfect. If a wall tapers away from 90° further than your measuring point, you may not pick it up.
A 3,4,5 can give you a good reading on an L-shaped kitchen, but what about getting an accurate overall template on a U-shaped kitchen where two Ls come into play? If a ninety on one wall is a pipe dream, don’t even imagine you’ll get two nineties.
If you determine a common line for both Ls, you should be able to figure out their angular relationship. A decent way to do this is to use the face-frame cabinet line in the middle part of the U as your “B-squared” line. If that line of cabinets has a nasty bow – not that you’ve ever seen that, but just theoretically – you’ll need to compensate in order to get an accurate base line.
Lesson #2 – The front doesn’t necessarily reflect the back. Taking a length/ width measurement on top of a base cabinet only works if you’re sure that it’s set squarely. We’ve all seen the square-cut top that has 1 1/4” overhang toward the front of the side panel and 3/4” overhang toward the back. A 2’ square can easily determine if your cabinet is a rectangle or a parallelogram, so there should really be no excuse for this one.
Don’t ever assume that a cabinet has been built or set squarely. One bad stud in the wall can skew a cabinet enough that you may need to trim the back of the piece in an attempt to improve the fit. Remember that doing this will affect your overhang on the front, so tread lightly.
Lesson #3 – Beware the stove hole. If you want a consistent opening for your stove, don’t follow the cabinet side walls that create the space for the appliance. It’s highly likely the cabinet guys didn’t check to make sure they had anything approaching a consistent channel. There’s nothing better than gluing down the pieces next to the stove, only to discover a 30” opening in the front and 29 1/2” in the back.
Inevitably, the piece that needs to be cut back is always the one with a seam and sink that can’t be ripped out and taken outside for a shave. The 15 minutes you spend grinding back and polishing an edge, while your helper tries desperately to catch all the dust and water spray, pretty much makes you look like a rookie.
Or, worse yet, you’ve got the 30” opening in the front you need for a slide-in range, but the back opens up to 30 1/2” and the flange on the stove doesn’t cover the cutout. Depending on overhangs and backsplash, this may result in remaking one or both pieces.
Carry two squares with you on all templating trips and create a consistent stove-opening channel with them. Even a digital system needs proper lines for measuring; I’ve taken two squares and put a line of Photo Top dots down one edge of each. Once these are lined up, photographed, and processed, I have a consistent stove opening. (The inside of the squares also can be marked with a laser, or touched with the Proliner wand, to create an accurate opening.)
Along with the two squares, another incredibly handy tool is the Nedo Winkeltronic digital angle finder. The Winkelfix (the analog version) can be used to determine an angle on a cabinet run or a wall. Remember that the reading from this tool is only as good as the points where you take the measurement. If you can’t find good reference points to place the device against, it’s as good as worthless.
Lesson #4 – Not all cabinets with a clipped corner have the same angle. Don’t assume a clip is going to be 135°. Depending on the look the cabinet maker was going for, or how badly the cabinet was built or set, the angle on a clipped cabinet can be just about anything.
My best piece of advice is to measure each part of the cabinet and then, if possible, find some way to trace the angle on a piece of cardboard and make a hard template with it. Then, trust that hard template. Don’t let your sawyer scoff at the weird angle and cut what he wants.
Lesson #5 – Plumb’s the word when it comes to cabinet panels on tall units. The most-common problem with full-height backsplash going up against cabinet panels is when the template assumes the cabinet panel is plumb and sits at a 90° angle to the base piece. I’ve seen many splash pieces measured for length without anyone bothering to put a square on top of the countertop itself to see if the cabinet wall is reasonably plumb.
Without this, you may end up having to trim the full-height splash in the field. Worse yet, if you don’t take plumb into account when you’re measuring for outlet cutouts, you may end up putting them in the wrong places.
The worst-case scenario for this is when you make the outlet cutout and then put the piece up, only to realize that the cabinet panel is out of plumb and you have to cut the edge down. This will shift your outlet cutout in the direction of the panel; depending on how badly out of plumb the cabinet is, and the size of the cover plate, you may be out of luck.
Lesson #6 – Edge-detail slips happen. In order for an edge detail to line up correctly from one piece to the next with an interior seam, the angle needs to be subdivided exactly in half. The more-complicated the edge detail, the more-important this angle becomes, as it’s quite difficult to feather a complicated edge detail to fit. For a manual shop using a hand-held router, a poorly divided angle can create a lot of hand work to get an ogee-edge detail to line up.
The most-obvious failure from poorly divided angles comes not from a U-shaped kitchen, but from a batwing snack bar with seams at the intersections. The templater drawing a seam on a line from the inside intersection to the outside intersection, when the angles don’t add up to a perfect ninety, has just given the guys in the polishing section twice the work. They will have to feather out both the inside and outside edge details. Have fun with that.
The obvious answer to angle-finding is a digital-templating system that’ll coordinate with CNC-based systems in the shop (or, for a manual shop, a system hooked up to a pen plotter). On the surface, now might not look like the best of times to make that kind of investment; in reality, the current state of our industry means every job counts that much more. If a digital templating system can measure more quickly (less staff) and more accurately (fewer mistakes), now is the perfect time.
Best of all, a digital system allows you to measure and divide an angle to the nth degree. You can show all those hacks that went before you why they weren’t worthy to be trusted.
Jason Nottestad, a 15-year veteran of the stone industry, is National Customer Service Manager for VT Stone Surfaces; he’s now on his third year of “The Installer” columns for Stone Business. He can be reached at JNottestad@vtindustries.com.
This article first appeared in the September 2009 print edition of Stone Business magazine. ©2009 Western Business Media Inc.