How to repair kitchen drawers - The Washington Post

2023-02-19 03:17:23 By : Ms. Ashley Xu

Q: In the 1980s, we remodeled our kitchen with cabinetry from the German maker Geba. I still love the look, but some of the drawers need to be repaired. They are made of plastic, which has cracked and broken. The front panel has come off a couple of drawers, and some of the drawer runners have broken. Can new drawers and runners be installed with the original cabinetry front panel reattached, so the look remains the same?

A: Lots of companies make money by selling new cabinets when a few simple repairs would make the existing ones work just fine. Home Depot’s website includes a primer on some of these, including how to fix a front panel that wobbles, how to close gaps on the bottom of the drawer and how to tighten or replace sliders. You often just need to tighten a screw or two, or drill new pilot holes, so the screws attaching the slides or the drawer front bite into something more solid than stripped holes. Veneer Plywood Colors

How to repair kitchen drawers - The Washington Post

In your case, going back to the manufacturer for replacement drawers and drawer slides isn’t an option. Geba, like many cabinet brands, was acquired by another company, then another. Installing new drawers — made of plywood or even hardwood, not plastic — should be possible, though it’s neither cheap nor easy. Unless you are especially handy, you probably would need to hire an experienced cabinetmaker. And depending on how many drawers need to be replaced, you might run into a problem finding someone to do the work.

There are ways to order replacement drawers from companies that specialize in shipping custom-cut components that are ready to assemble. The Cabinet Door Store, for example, advertises that it can supply a prefinished plywood drawer box for as little as $13.99 and one made of Baltic birch with dovetail joints for $14.99. But if you play around with the company’s pricing tool, you’ll discover that these starting prices will cover a drawer about five inches wide, five inches deep and three inches high. A dovetailed drawer 20 inches wide, 20 inches deep and five inches high is $50.82. Even that price might seem like a bargain way to repair your cabinets. But, unfortunately, it isn’t that simple.

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From the pictures you sent, the plastic drawers in your cabinets appear to have been molded so that the drawer slides tuck into sides of the drawers. There is no way to reuse those slides (and you note that some have broken). If you get plywood drawers, the slides would need to project beyond the sides of the drawer box, which means the interior dimensions of the drawer will probably be smaller than what you have now.

Drawer slides come in a bewildering array of styles, with some mounting on the sides of the drawer, others on the bottom side edges and others under the drawer, at the center. Typical side-mounted slides, which are probably what you need, take up about ½ inch on each side of the drawer, so the outside drawer dimensions need to be about one inch less than the width of the opening.

If you plan to put really heavy things in the drawer, you might need heavy-duty slides, which carry up to 400 pounds rather than the more typical 100 pounds. These might need ¾-inch clearance on each side. And if maximizing a drawer’s interior width is a priority, and the drawer doesn’t need to hold heavy things, you might want slides designed to be recessed part of the way into the drawer sides, such as Slim-Line slides (starting at $6.70 for a pair from Lee Valley); fitted into a groove ¼-inch deep on each drawer side, they need only ¼-inch of side clearance.

In many construction projects, it’s fine to cut parts slightly bigger, then trim as needed for a perfect fit. But there is no practical way to fix a drawer that’s too big, so the drawer needs to be made at the precise width needed or even a hair less. (It is possible to shim the slides to accommodate a drawer that’s slightly too narrow.)

Attaching the new slides to the cabinet boxes is also tricky. The slides need to be perfectly level and at exactly the same height, and that height needs to match where the mating pieces attach to the drawer sides. Then the old drawer front needs to be attached to the new drawer, so it aligns perfectly with any neighboring cabinet doors or drawer fronts.

To make all of this work, you will probably need to hire an experienced cabinetmaker to figure out the specific slides and drawer dimensions, and to install the parts. That person would probably also want to make the drawer boxes. Otherwise, the job would be too small to warrant the time.

Pascal Laigle, owner of Pascal’s Woodworking in Silver Spring, Md., (301-593-7654; pascalswoodworking.com) said that you would probably wind up spending about $200 to $250 a drawer. Whether he would take on the job would depend on the scale of the project and the other jobs he is juggling.

Before you invest in drawer replacements, Laigle recommends carefully evaluating the conditions of other cabinet parts, so you don’t make expensive repairs, then decide a short time later to replace everything. In one of the pictures you sent, he noticed a place where the laminate covering over the base cabinet material (plywood or particleboard) might be coming loose. That’s fixable, too, but repairs do add up.

How to repair kitchen drawers - The Washington Post

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