Toe kicks are one of the final details that give your cabinet installation a clean, finished look. While they’re typically installed after your flooring is in place, this video shows exactly how the process works. We walk through how to install toe kicks so they look sharp at the end of cabinet runs and around leg extensions or exposed cabinet ends. These tips will help you achieve a polished, professional finish.
Video Transcript
Justin:
It's a glorious day here at Cabinet Joint. I'm Justin, and today I'm here with Josh, and we're going to be talking about toe kicks. Now Josh, we are standing on subfloor here. So, are we good to go ahead and install this yet?
Josh:
No, we're going to wait for the flooring to go in, and the toe kicks will go after.
Justin:
How do you go about installing your toe kick?
Josh:
Yeah. So, typically I like to run a bead of painters caulk or just an adhesive of some type right down the back of it, and then put a few 18-gauge finish nails in. You usually can get away with shooting them pretty high, and you'll never see them unless you crouch down and look for them.
Justin:
That seems pretty straightforward. Now what happens when you get to the ends of your cabinet runs?
Josh:
Yeah. So, really there's two situations. If you have a leg extension like what we have over here, you can dive right into that leg extension, but you're still going to have an unfinished inside perpendicular edge to that toe kick. So we want to cap that off with matching materials.
That recess for that leg extension is ¾", and our toe kicks are ½". So you want to use a piece of scrap wood. Here I used just a ¼" shim and I glued it to the back. That way we get a ¾" thickness and it's flush and finished with the inside of the leg extension.
If there is no leg extension and it's just a recessed toe kick, our toe kicks are made from ½" plywood. So the edge of it is kind of raw. It's not very pretty. What I like to do is just put a 45° miter on this and then make a small return cap. It's essentially just a ½" wide piece that's also been cut 45°. Just use wood glue, or you can use accelerated superglue like we have, and just pop that on. Hold it for a few seconds, and then you've got a nice solid wood-looking finish on the end.
Once you've got that piece glued on, you'll probably have a small little seam here in the corner. You can take that touch-up kit, the wax crayon, and just basically fill it in and then polish it off and get a nice finished return.
Justin:
It does look a lot better. Are these steps always necessary?
Josh:
No. Really we just want to do this on exposed ends. If you're over there and you're going between a refrigerator panel and dying into the range, the range always sticks out more. So there's no need to do special treatment to that. You'll never see that raw end. Other than that, anything exposed, this is the proper way to do it for a nice finished look.
Justin:
And Josh, I see this is plywood here. Is there any need for that to be hardwood?
Josh:
No, there's no need for that. We already have a ½" toe kick backer on there, and then you're adding another ½" layer of plywood on top of that. It's really sturdy.
Justin:
Well, Josh, thank you so much for teaching us all about toe kicks. If you have any questions about your toe kicks, installing your toe kicks, how to make returns, you can reach out to your cabinet coach or you can call us at 888-211-6482.
Thank you guys for watching. Have a great day.
