How to Adjust Your Cabinet Doors and Drawers

Are you frustrated by misaligned, bumping, and scraping cabinet doors and drawers? Making adjustments to cabinet doors and hinge is one of the cheapest and easiest fixes. Even homeowners can take good care of this annoying daily problem.

While adjusting cabinet doors and drawers is an important step that has to be done during the installation process, it might need some adjustments from time to time. Cabinet drawers are subjected to contraction and expansion. Moreover, the weight of the drawers changes as well.

So, how to adjust cabinet drawers and doors? Continue reading the article to find more about it.

Easy steps to adjust the cabinet drawers:

When you notice that your cabinet drawers need a fix, make adjustments by following the steps listed below. The process is simple and all you need is a flashlight and screwdriver.

Find out what you need to do with the drawer face. For example, do you want the left side of the drawer face a bit up?
Take out the drawer box by releasing it from the guide.
Next, adjust the tabs. While you can find them at different places, typically it lies on the underside of the box.
Now, check how the adjusted drawer fits in the cabinet by putting it back in the right place. Find out whether the adjustment was effective. Repeat the steps if you think that it needs more adjustments.
However, some drawer slides have more adjustment points and are responsible for controlling the tilt of the drawer box. The adjusters are located on the backside of the slides and mounted to the cabinet box.
If you want to adjust the tilt, you have to remove the drawer box. While removing, you will find the mounting cleat that moves along with it. The back of the drawer tends to raise when the cleat goes up. You can make the drawer tilt with ease either to the left or right or back to front by adjusting the tab.

Diagnose the problem in the cabinet doors:

The first thing you can do is to find out why the cabinet doors won’t close smoothly. Cabinet doors go through constant abuse and issues might take several forms. The cabinet door wood might have warped over time, the hinges might be rusted or may have loosened.

Examine the hinges and doors inside and out. Check for catches or rubs. Fixing the loose screws or replacing them with the best hinges might resolve the issue. If you observe rubbing, overlapping, or catching, mark the edges that are responsible for the cabinet door not closing.

The final step is to remove the door and look for signs that you didn’t find before. It gives you an insight about the outside and inside of the boxes for any indication of wear and tears that you missed out on earlier.

Adjusting cabinet doors that won’t close:

Adjusting the cabinet door that rubs –When the door is rubbing against each other while closing, you should try adjusting the hinges. Locate the two screws on the hinges. Make small turns on the screw that is near the door and adjust the position to the right and left. It resolves issues related to rubbing.
Fixing cabinet hinges that won’t close –Door hinges allow you to make adjustments in a few different ways. The right and left adjustments are discussed above. To adjust them up and down, unscrew the base plate slightly where the hinge locks in and move the doors until they reach the top and bottom level.

To make the cabinet doors further or closer to the box, use the screw away from the doors, and not the ones used for adjusting to the right or left. However, remember that no hinges are immortal, but they can be adjusted. Moreover, they wear down with time and may need a replacement.

Adjusting a door that overlaps –When a cabinet door overlaps when closed, adjusting the hinges might resolve the issue. However, if the problem remains the same, you may need to replace either the hinges or doors.

Conclusion

It is up to you to decide whether to repair or replace the cabinet doors and drawers along with the hinges whenever you face trouble. You can try a few methods discussed above. However, if you think that the best course of action should be replacing the hinges, go ahead with it.