Installing a Microwave
Posted by Wayne
I was not particularly excited about putting the new microwave in after the trouble I had getting the old one out. It was attached with two bolts coming in from the cabinet above and on the back with a wall mounted bracket. I removed the two bolts, and then lifted and pried from every possible angle trying to get it off of the wall bracket. I took half of the old microwave apart from the bottom because I believed there must be a hidden screw attaching it to the wall bracket somewhere, but I couldn’t find anything. I eventually just ripped it off the wall. I still cannot figure out why the old microwave was so tough to take down.
The way the microwave is hung to the wall is pretty straight-forward. The new microwave came with a template for the wall bracket which I taped onto the wall after carefully measuring the specified distance from the bottom of the cabinet above. I had purposely extended the backsplash above where I believed the bottom of the microwave would sit. I did this because I didn’t want to be left with any sort of gap between the top of the backsplash and the bottom of the microwave. The chances of a row of tiles lining up perfectly with the bottom of the microwave were pretty slim.
Because I had a hole in the drywall behind the microwave I could easily see where the wall studs were. I marked the holes from the template at these locations and also in several additional places for additional bracket support (as little support as that may be going straight into drywall).
Most of the holes that I needed to pre-drill happened to be directly on grout lines. There were several that needed to go directly through backsplash tiles as well. I drilled these holes with a small masonry bit. I had some success at drilling the holes through the tiles without cracking them, however it would all be covered up by the bracket and the microwave so it didn’t really matter.
You can drill through an ordinary sized tile with a masonry bit without cracking it by taping off an “x” with masking tape before drilling through the center of the “x”. But because these tiles are so small (like a domino) they really wanted to crack, especially when the hole was near a tile edge.
After I had the holes pre-drilled, I attached the bracket to the wall with the provided screws. In several areas where I wasn’t screwing into a stud, I went slowly and as soon as it got slightly tight I stopped screwing. It was only attaching to drywall, so if I would have tightened to much it would have just stripped out and gotten loose. I could have used molly bolts or some other type of screw system to attach these securely to the drywall, but that would require putting much larger holes into the tile (which I didn’t care to do). I was able to attach the bracket to two studs and with several other screws across the bracket it was more than secure for the weight of the microwave.
The new microwave also came with a template for pre-drilling two bolt holes in the cabinet above in the correct location. After some quick measurements I realized that the old holes were already in the correct location if I was measuring from the wall (this must be somewhat of a standard distance). My new microwave would have to be about 1/2 inch further away from the wall because of the thickness of the backsplash.
I found it tough to drill new holes so close to the old ones because the drill bit tended to slip right into the old hole. I ended up basically just grinding out the original holes away from the wall with the drill bit. The bolts came with pretty wide washers, so there was some room for error (see image below).
Once I had the holes the right distance away from the wall in the cabinet above, I was ready to hang the new microwave. I took the microwave out of the box and held it at a slight angle to get it mounted up onto the wall bracket. I had my wife hold it in place while I fed the power cord up into the cabinet above through a pre-cut hole, and then she pushed it all the way up against the top cabinet and held it in place while I secured it from above with the two bolts and washers.
The whole thing was a fairly simple process and it took about 1 hour. The new microwave certainly went up a lot easier than the old one came down.
After
One Response to “Installing a Microwave”
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May 17th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Today is the day we are getting our new appliances. I am printing out your pages on the Microwave and Dishwasher in hopes that they will help Craig. Last night we took out all the appliances to get ready for the delivery. It wasn’t pretty, the house is only 11 years old but some of the the appliances needed a rubber mallet to even budge them. Wish us luck.
Wendy