IKEA kitchens lack of service void

[noos999]

Hi all

The lack of a service void on IKEA kitchen cabinets has been discussed several times here. In my case (if I choose an IKEA kitchen) this will be as issue under the sink as there are two pipes running horizontally behind the sink unit and the adjacent corner unit. Could a solution be simply to miss out the hardboard backing board and cut notches in the side-walls of the base units to accommodate the pipes? Presumably the backing board is there to give rigidity rather than load-bearing strength so perhaps I could use some angle brackets instead in order to give the base units rigidity?

thanks

Julian

[The Medway Handyman]

Or put in a new backing board. Fix some timber strips to the bottom & sides of the base unit & screw the hardboard on. Hides the pipes but easily removed for access.

[Andy Hall]

Probably not a good idea to do it this way. The backing board on knock down carcasses is there to prevent it from being pushed sideways. The problem is that if this does happen at all, the load bearing capability fails rapidly - think of the effect of a cardboard box with the end flaps all open.

Angle brackets are not really a good way either because they are located only in the corners and are liable to bend quite easily - even the steel ones.

A better solution would be to cut some strips of softwood (not less than 100mm or so wide and say 35mm thick) and fit them side to side at top and bottom of the carcasses at the back, screwing through the chipboard into the sides of the softwood and then the ends. This will give you a fairly rigid structure. You can then notch out the sides of the chipboard sides of the carcasses to take the pipes.

Finally you can trim the supplied rear panels and fit them to the softwood with dome head screws.

[.]

or screw 2 x 2 battens to the wall: that way you create a service gap for low voltage & under unit lighting, extra sockets etc. either way is better than hacking the units about.

[noos999]

Thanks to all for the helpful advice. I noticed that IKEA do custom-width worktops so I could bring the units forward away from the wall and order an extra-wide worktop accordingly..

[Stuart Noble]

Or just cut the existing one down so that it fits the cabinet rather than the grooves. I wouldn't worry too much about the rigidity. Presumably it'll be bolted to adjoining cabinets and, once the whole thing is screwed to the wall, it isn't going to move. I think the backing board function is cosmetic rather than structural