Spent 4 hours on a 20 minute cabinet job because of one crooked stud

Hung a set of upper cabinets in a 1950s house in Portland and the face frame kept racking no matter how much I shimmed. Turned out the stud behind the drywall was bowed almost 3/4 inch over 30 inches, so I had to sister a straight board to it and start over, whole thing ate my Saturday. Any of you keep a laser level on hand for spotting this stuff before you drill, or do you just feel for it?

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emmaking14d ago

A laser level on the wall won't show you a bowed stud anyway, since the drywall hides it and the laser just reads the drywall surface. What I do is run a straightedge or a 4 foot level flat across the wall before I even unpack the cabinets, and if I see light gaps or rocking, I know something's off back there. Poking around with a stud finder helps too, but the cheap ones lie, so I'll often just drill a small test hole where the stud should be and bend a piece of wire in there to feel how far it bows. Four hours still happens sometimes, but at least I find out before the cabinets are up.

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