In the kitchen, one of the biggest points for decor in the kitchen are the kitchen cabinets. The cabinets in a home are meant to last for the life of your home. However, there are things that are unexpected which can cause damage to your cabinets, their doors, hinges, drawer slides, and more. When something occurs, there are two choices: repair or replace them. It may be easy to replace them, but that route is expensive, and creates a good deal of waste.
The better choice is to repair the cabinets. How to do so depends greatly upon the location and extent of the damage done to them. If the damage is light, then it can be very easy to repair and will require minimal quantities of parts to purchase, which means a cheaper fix. Based upon the problem areas of the cabinet, the determination of what is needed in terms of money and time becomes clear. From this, you can figure out if it would be cost effective to fix the cabinets, or if it is required to replace them.
Doors and Hinges:
The easiest area to fix, a problem with the door and hinges on the cabinet cab be fixed by looking at a couple of things. Look at the screws; do any need to be tightened? If that is not sufficient, you may need to replace them with larger or longer screws. If the holes for the screws are too damaged, then you can move them to another part of the door
Drawers:
This is another easy to fix area, even if the problem is a stuck drawer. Moving and repositioning the drawer until both runners are back in place will fix most sliding problems. It may be the case however that damage may be done to the slides or runners. If this should be the case, then they will need to be replaced. Many times however, the necessary fix is to ensuring that all screws are tight and in their right locations.
Frame:
Should something occur to the frame and wood of the cabinet, the question is to what extent is the damage. For minor occurrences of damage, it'll work just to reassemble the pieces with wood glue. As the damage grows in magnitude, so will the methods to repair them. More extensive repairs will require something stronger, such as an epoxy wood kit, or the introduction of a piece of wood the same species as the cabinet.
When you should find that damage has occurred to your cabinets it is key to assess the damage and find out what it will take to repair the damage. It could be fixed with a screw driver, or a small trip to the home improvement store. Do not overestimate what you can do however; there are always jobs that beyond the homeowner and it may be best to contact outside help. It may even be the case that the damage is so extensive as to warrant fully replacing the cabinets. Just check out the situation and come up with a plan.
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Originally posted 2008-12-03 05:30:21. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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3 comments ↓
I’ve been having a horrible time getting my hignes to stay straight…any suggestions?
You offer some really great suggestions. I particularly like your suggestions about replacing missing screws. But, like the responder above, I have had issues with straight hinges. What do you do for that problem?
Good quality cabinets are meant to last a long time – not for the life of the house. The cabinet doors and drawers receive a tremendous amount of use. And children are even harder on cabinets.
Using a high quality hinge, keeping the doors adjusted and just common sense mantainence should keep your cabinet doors and drawers operating smoothly for years. The type of hinge (i.e. straight, butt, offset, hidden or European hinges) should not matter that much.
However, using inexpensive (cheap) hinges of any kind will definately create problems after time. Poor installation (stripping screws, moving screw holes slightly, bending the hinges) will also cause problems.
Adjusting hinges is not a particularly hard or taxing job. Like everything, if someone knows what they are doing, they make it look easy. There are lots of tips and techniques for each particular condition. Knowing those, and when to use them, is the hard part. If you, the homeowner, are not adept enough to do the job correctly, hiring a cabinet maker to “tune up” and install new hinges where needed is definately worth the minimal cost. For a small investment in maintainence, your large investment in cabinetry will be easily extended.
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