After the success in getting one drawer working again and having it properly installed, I decided to repeat that success on the other drawer. The old flimsy and bent (not to forget shimmed with vintage square nuts) drawer slides were replaced with new slides. It's also surprising that I was able to find usable replacements at Lowe's this time. I was hoping to find 26 inch slides, but settled for 24 inch slides which oddly turned out to be the right ones that were needed!
Again, I attached the drawer box parts first and managed to figure out where the drawer slides go in the cabinet, having already attached and installed the side support where they should have been. And I had to get a metal right angle brace for the left side (also filling the missing gap with the last bits of whatever wood thing I got at Goodwill) since it wasn't cut long enough and the glue failed to work. A friend of mine noted I could have used wooden dowels, something which I never considered. He's worked with wood enough to realize it could have worked. Sometimes he makes complete sense, and that was one of those times. Yes, he's right.
As it turned out, the old drawer slides were never installed right nor were they level for this drawer. When you see this one in action now, there's no rubbing on the bottom of the drawer opening and a paper thin gap at the top on the right side of the drawer. It now glides in and out without touching anything. The only left over problem is that the right side of the drawer box doesn't completely rest right up against the cabinet front, but I'm willing to accept it since the drawer works now.
And the slides I bought this time work with #6 screws (It came with what I correctly figured out were #5 screws), so no needing to buy the longer screws since I already had them.
It's just so odd that these drawers never worked right when we moved in, and now they do. I had the wood needed for side support around here for a couple years at least. My plan took a long time to happen, but when it was necessary to do something about it, it worked as I had envisioned it in my head. I measured nothing in regard to placement of slides. I just wish Mom could see these drawers work.
Now I need strong door latches for 3 cabinet doors so I can keep the cats out. They like to patrol for mice in there.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
I managed to install a drawer
About 6 weeks or so ago, before my car began its period of repeatedly needing fixed, one of the drawer slides in one of the kitchen drawers decides to break. Now, keep in mind that these drawers were never installed right to behind with.
The original idiot who put in these drawers didn't use pieces of wood to support the drawer slides, so the cheap slides that were put in would bend and allow the drawer box to fall out of the slides. Plus the drawer box wasn't wide enough for the opening, so there were these square nuts used to try to fill that space, shim it up in place as one way to put it.
So when the one side slide broke, I took it as a chance not only to replace the slides but to properly install the drawer once and for all. That meant (as I had planned some time ago) getting pieces of wood measured and cut to support the sides in the cabinet. At the time (I forget when) I had cut the pieces of wood, I was going to just figure out a way to put them in and support the slides from inside the cabinet. When the opportunity came to actually do something about it because it was exceedingly necessary, I just glued the tight fitting pieces of wood in place which worked just as well. I was going to use nails and screws instead.
Also was the opportunity to replace the flimsy metal slides with something newer. This took a while. Lowe's didn't have the 26 inch / 610 mm aka 61 cm slides I needed. Plus their section on drawer slides was disorganized. I ended up at a Home Depot and found a pair of side mount slides for $7.95, which I thought was more than reasonable. They had what I needed and the section for these things was organized.
I chose to mount the drawer based on the right side of the box which showed me that I needed to make up about a 1/2 inch to a 9/16ths of an inch gap for the left side drawer slide. If I had found a proper piece of solid wood, I wouldn't have needed to find replacement screws that had to be 1.5 inches in length. The screws that come with the drawer must be a size 5, since I found #4 screws to have screw heads that are too small, yet #6 screws are just slightly too big. And the screws with the slides were not long enough!
At any rate, after buying a new electric drill at Harbor Freight Tools for $13, I managed to install the cabinet slide parts. I determined where they needed to be (after gluing in the 1/2 inch thick filler) by putting the cabinet slides on the drawer box and putting that in the cabinet, shimmed from the bottom using matchbooks, and using a china marker to show me where the slides would end up.
I began attaching the cabinet slide parts with a screw in the front, then a screw in the middle so I could adjust for making it level, then tight screws all around. I was worried that the screw heads would protrude above the surface of the slide and knock against the bearing wheel, but ended up having some amount of leeway and wasn't a problem.
So now I have one drawer properly installed and it moves in and out so gracefully. In spite of the packaging for the parts I bought telling me all these things that needed to be measured, etc, etc, I ended up just doing a practical eyeballing of the task and just put it where it should go.
Now to work on the other drawer.
I also noticed the green electric weed trimmer appears to be missing. Aside from the duct tape on the body of it, it worked just fine. I paid $20 brand new for it.
The original idiot who put in these drawers didn't use pieces of wood to support the drawer slides, so the cheap slides that were put in would bend and allow the drawer box to fall out of the slides. Plus the drawer box wasn't wide enough for the opening, so there were these square nuts used to try to fill that space, shim it up in place as one way to put it.
So when the one side slide broke, I took it as a chance not only to replace the slides but to properly install the drawer once and for all. That meant (as I had planned some time ago) getting pieces of wood measured and cut to support the sides in the cabinet. At the time (I forget when) I had cut the pieces of wood, I was going to just figure out a way to put them in and support the slides from inside the cabinet. When the opportunity came to actually do something about it because it was exceedingly necessary, I just glued the tight fitting pieces of wood in place which worked just as well. I was going to use nails and screws instead.
Also was the opportunity to replace the flimsy metal slides with something newer. This took a while. Lowe's didn't have the 26 inch / 610 mm aka 61 cm slides I needed. Plus their section on drawer slides was disorganized. I ended up at a Home Depot and found a pair of side mount slides for $7.95, which I thought was more than reasonable. They had what I needed and the section for these things was organized.
I chose to mount the drawer based on the right side of the box which showed me that I needed to make up about a 1/2 inch to a 9/16ths of an inch gap for the left side drawer slide. If I had found a proper piece of solid wood, I wouldn't have needed to find replacement screws that had to be 1.5 inches in length. The screws that come with the drawer must be a size 5, since I found #4 screws to have screw heads that are too small, yet #6 screws are just slightly too big. And the screws with the slides were not long enough!
At any rate, after buying a new electric drill at Harbor Freight Tools for $13, I managed to install the cabinet slide parts. I determined where they needed to be (after gluing in the 1/2 inch thick filler) by putting the cabinet slides on the drawer box and putting that in the cabinet, shimmed from the bottom using matchbooks, and using a china marker to show me where the slides would end up.
I began attaching the cabinet slide parts with a screw in the front, then a screw in the middle so I could adjust for making it level, then tight screws all around. I was worried that the screw heads would protrude above the surface of the slide and knock against the bearing wheel, but ended up having some amount of leeway and wasn't a problem.
So now I have one drawer properly installed and it moves in and out so gracefully. In spite of the packaging for the parts I bought telling me all these things that needed to be measured, etc, etc, I ended up just doing a practical eyeballing of the task and just put it where it should go.
Now to work on the other drawer.
I also noticed the green electric weed trimmer appears to be missing. Aside from the duct tape on the body of it, it worked just fine. I paid $20 brand new for it.
