Do-it-yourself installation of an apron in the kitchen

Installing an apron in the kitchen is an indis­pens­able part of a major over­haul in the cook­ing room. There is noth­ing com­pli­cat­ed in this mat­ter, the main thing is to have the sim­plest skills in con­struc­tion and repair.

What should be the apron

An apron, as an inte­ri­or ele­ment, not only dec­o­rates the space between kitchen cab­i­nets. It is designed to pro­tect walls from liq­uid, grease, dirt and soot. In order for the coat­ing to ful­fill its func­tion, it should be made prac­ti­cal, easy to clean, resis­tant to high tem­per­a­tures and the effects of chem­i­cal deter­gents.

Wall cladding near the work sur­face should have a pleas­ing appear­ance. Nowa­days, aprons are made from ceram­ic tiles, mosaics or glass. For those who want to make repairs for cen­turies, fac­ing made of nat­ur­al stone, met­al or brick is suit­able.

How to calculate the width and height of a kitchen apron

Before you install an apron in the kitchen, you need to decide on its dimen­sions. The height of the pro­tec­tive coat­ing depends on the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

• size and type of plate;
• height of the kitchen set;
• hood type;
• the growth of a per­son who most often uses a stove and a head­set.

The apron should go under the coun­ter­top. The stan­dard height of kitchen cab­i­nets is 85 cm, i.e. the max­i­mum dis­tance from the floor to the begin­ning of the pro­tec­tive wall cladding should be a max­i­mum of 84 cm.

Instal­la­tion of an apron in the kitchen should not be start­ed with­out cal­cu­lat­ing its width. The width of the cladding can vary great­ly and depend on sev­er­al nuances: the growth of the host­ess, the height of the ceil­ing, the size of house­hold appli­ances and fur­ni­ture.

It should be tak­en into account that if the doors of the hang­ing cab­i­nets open up with the help of closers, it is bet­ter to make the apron small, 45–60 cm wide.

If a wash­ing machine is built into the coun­ter­top, the height of the floor draw­ers will be at least 90 cm. The dis­tance from the low­er pieces of fur­ni­ture to the upper ones will reach approx­i­mate­ly 45 cm. This means that the height from the floor to the hang­ing pedestals will be 1.35 m. Let’s add 2 cm, which go behind the table. The width of the cladding will be 47 cm, and the height of the loca­tion will be 88 cm from the floor cov­er­ing.

If the kitchen cab­i­nets are of stan­dard size and their height is 85 cm, then the pro­tec­tive wall cov­er­ing will be 5 cm low­er.

Fastener selection

Hav­ing decid­ed on the dimen­sions, it is nec­es­sary to under­stand how to prop­er­ly install and what mate­r­i­al to use. The choice of the nec­es­sary fas­ten­ers depends on the type of apron itself. So, it is bet­ter to fix the MDF pro­tec­tive coat­ing on the wall with a spe­cial glue, and PVC pan­els are installed on wood­en slats.

On wooden slats

Aprons made of PVC or MDF are con­ve­nient­ly attached to the wall using wood­en slats. With the help of a strip, the pan­el can be installed even on an uneven wall sur­face.

The wood­en slats them­selves are the frame. They are installed at a dis­tance of 40 cm from each oth­er. Planks must be in the same plane. The wood­en frame is attached to the wall with self-tap­ping screws.

To kitchen cabinet

This is the sim­plest type of attach­ment for a kitchen apron. One plinth is mount­ed between the floor cab­i­nets and the cladding, and the oth­er between the wall cab­i­nets and the back­splash. It is impor­tant that the size of the pro­tec­tive coat­ing is less than the dis­tance between the coun­ter­top and the top row of cab­i­nets.

For liquid nails

To glue a kitchen apron on liq­uid nails, you will need the fol­low­ing mate­ri­als:

• liq­uid glue;
• dec­o­ra­tive plinth, which is placed between the coun­ter­top and the wall.

This method of instal­la­tion requires a lit­tle finan­cial out­lay. The instal­la­tion process itself is clean. Before you glue the apron on liq­uid nails, you don’t even need to take the fur­ni­ture out of the kitchen.

The adhe­sive com­po­si­tion is applied over the entire area of ​​the reverse side of the MDF pan­el. The can­vas must be fixed on a flat wall. If a spe­cial rail is not used dur­ing instal­la­tion, the pan­el will have to be held by hand until the adhe­sive hard­ens.

We install the apron ourselves

Although the process of installing a kitchen back­splash is quite sim­ple, there are a few prob­lems that a novice work­er may encounter. First of all, it is nec­es­sary to deter­mine the place­ment of the fac­ing coat­ing and the method of its fas­ten­ing. Every­thing else depends on the vari­ety of the kitchen apron itself.

Working with sheet plastic

When installing a plas­tic apron, it is nec­es­sary to decide in which direc­tion the pan­els will be locat­ed. If the plas­tic sheet is of suf­fi­cient width, it is bet­ter to place it hor­i­zon­tal­ly so that there are few­er seams on the apron. Nar­row pan­els should be cut into pieces and mount­ed ver­ti­cal­ly.

The plas­tic cladding is attached to the wall with liq­uid nails. For greater reli­a­bil­i­ty, self-tap­ping screws are screwed into the edges of the apron. Sharp cuts of plas­tic are cov­ered with dec­o­ra­tive plinths or start­ing strips. The joints should be masked with planks of a suit­able col­or.

Use of chipboard

Chip­board (chip­board) is a mate­r­i­al that is often used for cladding the walls of the kitchen work­ing area. The chip­board apron is mount­ed only on a flat sur­face with glue. Before instal­la­tion, the slab is cut into pieces of the desired size. Large and heavy sheets of chip­board should be addi­tion­al­ly fixed with self-tap­ping screws with dec­o­ra­tive caps.

Application of ceramic tiles and mosaics

When fac­ing walls in the kitchen with ceram­ic tiles or mosaics, you must first pre­pare a spe­cial adhe­sive solu­tion. The mix­ture is applied to the wall with a nar­row spat­u­la and even­ly dis­trib­uted over its sur­face. The tile is installed with a lit­tle pres­sure.

The tile is laid even­ly and neat­ly in hor­i­zon­tal rows from the bot­tom up. When attach­ing each row, the hor­i­zon­tal is checked using a lev­el. Mosaics should not be stacked indi­vid­u­al­ly, but in matri­ces. Each one forms a 30x30 cm slab con­tain­ing sev­er­al dozen ele­ments. The rest of the lay­ing is sim­i­lar to the tile.

Glass requires care

Glass aprons are mount­ed to the wall using sup­port­ing clamps or glue. Sup­port­ing fas­ten­ers pre­vent the glass from fit­ting snug­ly against the coun­ter­top and cab­i­nets. There is a gap between the wall and the glass pan­el. The advan­tage of such a mount is that it does not need to drill holes in the glass that vio­late the strength of the struc­ture.

The max­i­mum load per pair of fas­ten­ers must not exceed 10 kg. 1 m² of glass 1 mm thick weighs 2.5 kg.

Glue mount­ing is pos­si­ble only if the glass apron is made of triplex. Since the adhe­sive is a reac­tive sub­stance, it will most like­ly cor­rode any plain glass over time. Adhe­sive-sealant for mir­rors is used to fas­ten glass pan­els from artis­tic triplex.

Apron made of stone originality and practicality

An apron made of mono­lith­ic arti­fi­cial stone is pre-cut to the required dimen­sions. Its instal­la­tion should include fas­ten­ing not only with an adhe­sive solu­tion, but also with anchor joints. To screw them in, it is nec­es­sary to make holes in the wall with a depth of about 10 cm. This will allow you to secure­ly fix the mas­sive struc­ture.

Using an uneven spat­u­la, an adhe­sive solu­tion is applied to the back sur­face of the plate. By gen­tly tap­ping the mal­let, the apron is pressed against the wall. After that, pro­ceed to anchor fix­a­tion.

The anchors take their place and are neat­ly twist­ed. Do not over­tight­en the fas­ten­ers, as this may dam­age the struc­ture of the stone slab. After tight­en­ing the anchors, the holes in the slab can be closed using spe­cial over­lays.