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mrsjoe_gw

What causes non-flush drawers?

mrsjoe
11 years ago

I'm trying to cool down and collect a little knowledge before I call my cabinet shop to discuss some of the issues. I ordered four stacks of drawers. Of those four, only one has all the door fronts reasonably lined up. The slides are full extension, soft close Solice slides. It seems like the uneven-ness must be coming from the hinges not being attached evenly, but I have no idea about these things. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

While I am looking for drawer info, I was also curious what the standard depth is of standard 24" depth cabinet frameless drawers with the undermount slides? My new drawers are an inch shorter than my face frame cabinet drawers, which I wasn't expecting because everyone talks about what a gain you get with frameless, so I'm thinking it must be due to the hinges.


BEGIN LONG RANT (no need to read, just need to get it out) ===>

On a separate note, I am probably over-reacting to everything due to the fact that throughout this remodel, I keep having workman make mistakes, some of which they HAD to notice and just leaving it like that, hoping I wouldn't notice, so they wouldn't have to fix it. This has happened with the reconstruction company, the hardwood floor installer, the carpet repairman, the electrician and now finally the cabinet company. Is it me? Do I have sucker on my forehead? Do I come across as the kind of person who would spend $10000 on custom cabinets and be okay that without telling me they put a filler on the inside of a cabinet because they ordered the drawer one inch narrow??!?

Examples: Reconstruction crew mis-measured two different door frames, so they both ended an inch above the floor on just one side. Unfortunately I noticed one but not the other. This could have been them hoping I didn't notice - could also be they didn't notice. Even though you would think they would notice the two sides didn't line up, I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and not lose my faith in all contractors. The cabinet maker mistake with the drawer they obviously had noticed because they put a cheap, unacceptable solution in place. Another example is when the carpet repair guy came to fix a seam and didn't actually fix it. One of his main tasks was fixing it so it wasn't noticeable and when he left it was still totally noticeable. You can't tell me that he didn't notice the seam was unacceptable! GRRRRRRRR...

Comments (7)

  • Crystal6145
    11 years ago

    Not sure what frameless drawers mean, but my 24" base cabinets lose 1 inch on each side and 2 1/2 inches on the back plus the drawer frame.

    My drawer fronts were not all sitting flush against the cabinet and it was because the drawer slide had came lose from a hole on the back of the drawer in shipping and had to be hammered back in. In one instance the hole was not in the right place so they had to send a new drawer.

    As far as the problems with workers I think it is just the world we live in - no one seems to take pride in their work anymore, expect to be paid double and we wonder why so many of our items are made in China. My first granite installer installed the wrong type of granite! They are lucky I liked it or they would have been removing it. My cherry cabinets came with a caramel glaze (looks like unfinished wood in the creases) rather than a dark chocolate glaze. They wanted to send me the glaze etc. to do it myself and return 15%, but I said no thank you, come pick them up and do what I ordered so still waiting on cabinet doors, plus I still have all the wrong doors/drawers boxed up in my livingrooom.

  • TxMarti
    11 years ago

    Can you take a photo of the uneven lineup? I'm not sure what you mean by hinges on the drawers. Hinges like door hinges?

    I agree that workmen would rather hide their mistakes than redo them so they are right. It's not a new thing; we uncover things in our 30 year old house all the time. I even noticed that one of our cabinets has a big split in it that was obviously done when the drawer glides were screwed in.

    Unfortunately, most mistakes do slide by and you don't notice until you are dusting, cleaning, or refinishing. And most people who don't read this forum or know what to look for probably miss all of them, and that's what the contractors count on.

    I know dh & I have made mistakes with our remodel, and some we are just going to have to live with. But, and this is a big but, we're not professionals and don't pretend to be. If I were paying a professional, I would expect perfection. Professional means they have the experience and know how to do it right. If I want a hack to do it, I'll do it.

  • writersblock (9b/10a)
    11 years ago

    Most drawers should have a couple of spots to adjust them for level, both vertically and horzontally. Just looking at pictures of the Salice hardware, it does.

  • mrsjoe
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Sorry, I said hinges when I meant drawer slides at one point in the post. Thanks for asking for pictures. When I took some crappy iPhone pics I could easily see some of the hinges that need adjustment. For example, in this one you can see clearly that the slide on the one side is much closer to the front than the other one:

    This would account for the fact that it doesn't soft close (further back side is not catching the thingy-do in the front on the bottom of the drawer) and for the fact it sticks out a bit, since I'm guessing the one is too far forward for a full close. Tried to get that too:

    On another one, the closer inspection showed me that the issue was the slide wasn't level. Since the bottom of the drawer lines up with the one below but the top sticks out. This one is really horrible and baffling to me why they wouldn't fix it right then:

    My husband is thinking that the guy wanted to go home and since he knows someone will have to come back out with new doors, he just left all this stuff (they ordered all our full length wall cabinet doors an inch short, which they swear has never happened before, so they don't know yet if they screwed up the measurements or the door company screwed up. I'm having a lot of supposed firsts, like the faucet and sink company that says I am the first person ever to get a magna-tite Delta faucet with the magnet missing - lucky me).

  • cabmanct
    11 years ago

    The slides have been incorrectly installed.
    I use Blum, not Salice, they call for 4mm ( 5/32 ) from the front edge, I also use special adjustable locking devices on the drawer boxes that can push the drawer out so they all end up in the same plane.
    I just checked their website, you need 4mm setback ( same as Blum )
    These guys were just plain lazy.

  • June Porter
    4 years ago

    The installer keeps asking me to look at the ones in their showroom (have the counter tops on). Mine are in the other picture and although I keep asking for them to be aligned they say the counter needs to one first. I don’t want expensive countertops installed in the drawers aren’t aligned first.

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