Cabinet Doors And Drawers That No Longer Close

A kitchen looks tired long before it is worn out. Usually what has aged is the hardware, not the cabinetry.

Doors that sit at different angles, a drawer that drops at the front, a cupboard that will not stay shut. All of that is fixable without touching the carcases.

Doors out of alignment

Modern cabinet hinges adjust in three directions, and most of them have never been touched since the kitchen was installed.

Sideways, to square the gap between doors on a pair.

In and out, to pull a door flat against the frame or push it off a rubbing neighbour.

Up and down, usually at the mounting plate, to line the top edges up across a run.

A full kitchen can be brought back into line in an hour with a screwdriver, and most of the doors that look wrong are just out of adjustment.

Where adjustment runs out, the hinge itself is worn. The cup stays in the door, the arm is what fails, and a replacement hinge in the same cup pattern is a direct swap.

Doors that will not stay closed

Older hinges rely on a spring to hold the door shut, and springs weaken.

Newer hinges have a soft close damper instead, which does the opposite job and also wears out. A door that slams instead of easing shut has a dead damper, not a broken hinge.

Both are replaceable individually. Neither needs the door off the wall.

Drawers that drop, stick or will not pull out

The runner is doing all the work, and runners are the first thing in a kitchen to fail.

Side-mounted roller runners, common in older kitchens, where the plastic wheel flattens and the drawer starts to tip forward.

Ball bearing runners, which are smoother and fail by the bearings jamming, usually after something has been spilled into them.

Undermount soft close runners, the current standard, where the damper fails and the drawer slams.

A runner swap is a direct replacement if the same type and length are available, and a conversion if they are not. The conversion matters because the drawer box depth and the cabinet width have to suit the new runner, and that is a measurement job rather than a guess.

A drawer that has stopped running smoothly and feels gritty is usually a cleaning job before it is a replacement one.

When the panel itself has failed

Two causes, both common, and neither is fixed by hardware.

Swelling at the base of a sink cabinet, where a slow tap or waste leak has soaked the particleboard. The board expands, the door no longer closes, and the swelling does not reverse when it dries. The leak is the real repair, and it sits with [laundry and kitchen connections](/blog/laundry-connections-and-what-goes-wrong).

Delaminating or chipped edges on a vinyl-wrapped door, usually above a dishwasher or an oven where steam has got behind the wrap. Heat and moisture lift the wrap and it does not go back.

Both of those are a door replacement rather than a repair, which raises the question of whether to replace doors or the kitchen.

Doors or the whole kitchen

The carcases are usually the part with life left in them.

If the boxes are sound, square and dry, new doors, new drawer fronts, new hinges and runners and a new benchtop give a kitchen that reads as new, with the plumbing and the electrical left where they are. That is the same calculation as [kitchen benchtop and splashback replacement](/blog/kitchen-benchtop-and-splashback-replacement).

If the carcases are swollen at the base, out of square, or the layout is the actual problem, doors on a failing box is money spent twice.

The jobs that come with it

A door replacement in an occupied apartment is rarely only joinery.

Handles move, so there are new holes and old ones to fill. A benchtop change usually means the sink and tap come out, which is plumbing. An appliance swap means a different cutout and often a different circuit, which is electrical, and that is the ordinary pattern described in [the job you think is one trade](/blog/the-job-you-think-is-one-trade-is-almost-always-three).

Ample adjusts, repairs and replaces cabinetry and its hardware, with the plumbing, electrical and benchtop work in the same programme so a kitchen is dealt with by one team rather than four appointments.