My $400 cabinet install went sideways when the wall decided not to be flat
Last Saturday I finally hung the upper cabinets in my kitchen off Tramway and Comanche, and the right side stuck out about half an inch from the wall while the left sat flush. I chased that gap with shims for two hours before I admitted the 1970s drywall was bowed and my stud finder kept hitting metal lath instead of wood. Ended up pulling everything down, sistering a 2x4 strip to the studs, and patching four holes with a $14 tub of joint compound. Whole job turned into a three-day mess instead of one afternoon. How do you folks deal with bowed plaster walls when you don't want to gut the whole thing?
Old houses have a way of turning a simple job into a life lesson. Same thing happened to me with a fence gate last summer, the posts looked straight but the ground had other plans and I fought that thing for a whole weekend. My dad always said nothing in a 50 year old house is square, level, or plumb, and it took me years to figure out he was not just being grumpy. You end up learning to plan for surprises instead of acting like everything will go smooth. Scribing a filler strip or floating the cabinets out with a backer board usually beats fighting the wall itself. How bad is the bow, more like a gentle curve or a real hump in the middle?