How to Maximize Space with Kitchen Cabinets to the Ceiling

Everyone has their little pet peeves in home design (just ask all the painted brick haters coming at me on social media), and for me one of them is when kitchen cabinets don’t extend to the ceiling. For us, the process of extending our kitchen cabinets to the ceiling was a make-it-up-as-you-go approach, but it was actually really easy!

If you’ve ever lived with stumpy cabinets, you’ll know they accumulate some Midwest plains levels of dust and make the room look shorter than it is. In some situations it does make sense to have cabinets stop, like if your ceilings are insanely tall or sloped or you live in a straw hut, but in 99% of cases I’m an advocate for just taking those bad boys the whole way up (and who doesn’t want extra storage?)

Here’s how extended our kitchen cabinets to the ceiling.

Crafting some makeshift brackets

We started by making some L-shaped brackets out of scrap 2×4. The gap between our upper cabinets and the ceiling was about 8 inches, so these brackets were roughly 6”x6”.

We held them up so the horizontal part of the “L” shape was sitting flat along the top of the upper cabinet, and the vertical part of the “L” shape was set back ¾” from the front of the cabinet (to account for the front piece we’d add later).

We secured them in place with screws inside the cabinet going up into the bracket.

Adding the front pieces

Next, we added pieces of 1×6 along the top of the cabinet, nailing them to the 2×4 brackets so they were flush with the upper cabinet. We beveled the edges of each 1×6 piece at 45 degrees so the outside and inside edges where the pieces connected looked more seamless.

I had initially planned to just do the 1×6 then add crown molding, but when I stepped back it looked kind of flat and terrible and I instinctively wanted to rip it down, but instead I took to Pinterest to find all the inspo I possibly could (and it turns out there are some “ways” you should do trim and molding, but also it seems like you can do whatever you want.)

With this incredibly unhelpful research under my belt, we decided to add 1×4 pieces along the front of the 1×6 pieces which would take the trim all the way to the ceiling and give a little bit more dimension.

Crown molding: a true enemy

Here’s a fun thing about old houses (or maybe all houses?): walls, ceilings and doors will never be straight, level and plumb.

I wanted crown molding along the very top of the cabinets where they met the beadboard ceiling, but after cutting a few pieces and trying to line them up at outside and inside corners, it just wasn’t working. I would hold the pieces up at a 45-degree angle not on the wall (even using a speed square to check!), but then when I held them up on the cabinet it just didn’t work and I feel like it has to be because of the ceiling’s unevenness.

Ultimately, I just decided to use crown molding corner blocks, which are pre-made pieces of crown molding you put on outside and inside corners, then just slide your straight-cut piece of crown molding into it so you don’t mess with any angles.

Is it cheating? Maybe. But at this point I had renovated an entire kitchen top to bottom and felt pretty secure in my renovation abilities so I don’t feel the need to prove to anyone that I can cut crown molding angles, ya know? Sometimes a win is a win.

Caulking and painting

The finish steps (as always) are where the project really comes together, so after a ton of caulking and painting, the makeshift effort to take our kitchen cabinets to the ceiling finally looked like one that was done on purpose.

This project was such a quick and easy one that made a big difference in the look of the kitchen. It’s also an easy one to take on even if you aren’t renovating – any stumpy cabinets can be taken up to the ceiling with a bit of configuring and color matching paint (if you don’t already know the exact paint color of your kitchen cabinets).

We hope you liked this quick & easy DIY about extending kitchen cabinets to the ceiling! Make sure to follow along on Instagram for day-to-day projects, and sign up to our newsletter for more project updates.