Hanging Cabinets in Straw Bale Walls
The easiest way to hang cabinets in straw bale walls is to use the chainsaw to cut a notch in the bale wall about 1 1/2 inches deep and 4 inches tall at the top of the base cabinets and the bottom and top of the upper cabinets.
This notch should be about 3-6" up (or down in the case of the top notches) from the edge of the cabinet. In other words, this will be for screwing the cabinets into, and so it needs to be below the top of the cabinet for access and above the bottom of the cabinet as well.
If you look inside your current cabinets, you should see a few screws through the back. That is the area you are looking to provide the nailers for. Once you have the notch, place a 2x4 into it and tie it through the straw bale with a baling needle and some twine to hold it in place.
Do this right before you add the mesh to the wall. When the mesh is installed, staple it to the nailers well. Sew the mesh through the wall and to the mesh on the far side of the wall. Now you have cabinet nailers! If there is a significant void around the 2x4 due to over-cutting of the bale wall, use a little expansion foam to fill it in.
That will help provide further strength to the nailer. Try not to let the foam expand through the mesh, as that will need to get cut off if it does.
Be sure to take a picture of a tape measure stretched from the floor to the center of each nailer. The picture should be a close-up that shows the exact height of the nailer on the wall.
Remember that it will be buried in plaster and you won't want to take random shots in the plaster trying to find the nailers again. I usually run my nailers wider than I know they will need to be across a kitchen wall, so if a change is made in the cabinetry, I will usually have enough nailers to accommodate the additional upper and lower cabinets on a long wall.
-Andrew Morrison