How to fit kitchen cabinets without moving external pipes?

ThisIsWeird

bezzo42 said:

Eldi_Dos so there wouldn’t be any problem by just attaching more legs to the cabinets? Would they still be stable without the support on the rail?

Hi Bezzo.

No, normal kitchen cabinets, like those supplied by Ikea et al, are not designed to be free-standing. They do require to be secured to the back wall to prevent them from parallelogramming.

So, your options would appear to be that you do secure them to the wall, or else you do as Eldi says and buy solid, free-standing furniture. For the former, you'd need to either get the LL's approval, or else make it all good when your tenancy finishes.

As for working around these pipes, your two options with normal kitchen base units would be to either cut notches in the back edges of the side panels to allow the units to fit over them and go right back to the wall, or to fit a batten or spacers between the units and the wall to allow them to stand away enough to clear the pipes.

For the former option, the unit's back panels could always be fitted afterwards to hide these pipes. The latter option would be needed if you had to cover free-standing appliances, as these, too, would be held out from the wall. Then you'd need a deeper worktop as described above.

So, what are you allowed to do?

bezzo42

I am not allowed to touch the pipes or break the wall. Besides that, everything is fine.

or to fit a batten or spacers between the units and the wall to allow them to stand away enough to clear the pipes.

Would this work with ikea furniture or only with freestanding units? It seems like the easier way to go

ThisIsWeird

bezzo42 said:

I am not allowed to touch the pipes or break the wall. Besides that, everything is fine.

or to fit a batten or spacers between the units and the wall to allow them to stand away enough to clear the pipes.

Would this work with ikea furniture or only with freestanding units? It seems like the easier way to go

This wouldn't be needed with freestanding units. It's only required for normal kitchen units to provide rigidity. 
Unless IKEA make their units sooo rigid that they can be freestanding, then they'll need securing. 
It's possible - in theory - to strengthen normal units to make them rigid enough for freestanding, but not easy to do neatly. Any parallely wobble would have the doors instantly out of alignment.

bezzo42

Thank you all for your comments!

ThisIsWeird

There are always ways of doing this.
For instance, if you have a return wall at each end of this row of units, you could brace the units at their ends to prevent any sideways movement, and that should take care of the main issue of 'parallelogramming'. Being adjustable, these telescopic spacres could be tweaked until the units are perfectly vertical. A deep worktop would span the gap at the back to cover the pipes void.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Space-Plug-Regular-30-50mm-Gaps-Pack/dp/B0859GZDDL/ref=asc_df_B0859GZDDL/?

Mutton_Geoff

ThisIsWeird said:

There are always ways of doing this.
For instance, if you have a return wall at each end of this row of units, you could brace the units at their ends to prevent any sideways movement, and that should take care of the main issue of 'parallelogramming'. Being adjustable, these telescopic spacres could be tweaked until the units are perfectly vertical. A deep worktop would span the gap at the back to cover the pipes void.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Space-Plug-Regular-30-50mm-Gaps-Pack/dp/B0859GZDDL/ref=asc_df_B0859GZDDL/?

Or scribe a worktop to fit then screw the base units to the worktop from underneath making one whole "unit" that spans the width. To remove, unscrew worktop etc