Cabinet door and drawer repair
Cabinet repair is the highest value small job in a kitchen, because a set of cabinets with sound boxes and tired hardware looks worn out and is nowhere near it. Doors that hang crooked, drawers that drag, a soft floor under the sink and a corner joint that has opened are all fixable in a day, and none of them need new cabinets. This work sits inside our kitchen repair service.
Service family Kitchen repair
Scheduling Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Service area Six counties across Southeast Michigan
Phone (734) 540-0347
What we repair and what we replace
We repair hinges, slides, drawer boxes, cabinet floors, face frame joints, loose panels and chipped edges. We replace doors, drawer fronts and hardware where the part itself has failed. What we do not do on this page is build a new kitchen, and if the boxes are water damaged through, that is the honest verdict rather than a series of repairs.
Hinges, and the two families you will meet
Older cabinets use a wrap around or semi concealed hinge screwed to the face frame, which loosens as the screw hole wears. Cabinets from the nineties onward mostly use a European cup hinge with three way adjustment built in. On the second type, nine out of ten crooked doors are a two minute adjustment with a screwdriver rather than a repair at all.
Doors that no longer line up
Start by looking at the gaps between doors rather than at the doors themselves. An even reveal top to bottom with one door sitting proud means a depth adjustment. A wedge shaped gap means the hinge plate has shifted or the screw holes have stripped. Two doors rubbing in the middle of a run usually means the cabinet itself has moved, which is a different fix.
Stripped screw holes, and the repair that lasts
A hinge screw that spins in a worn hole is the most common cabinet failure we see, and the wrong answer is a longer screw. The right one is to fill the hole with glue and a hardwood dowel or plug, let it cure, then re drill and re fit on solid material. A longer screw buys six months. A plugged hole outlasts the kitchen.
What gets checked on a cabinet call
- Hinge type, and whether the doors carry built in adjustment
- Screw holes in the face frame and the door edge
- Slide type, length and whether both sides match
- Drawer box corners, bottoms and the dado they sit in
- The cabinet floor under the sink and beside the dishwasher
Drawer slides, and why yours feel gritty
Three generations turn up in local kitchens. Wooden runners in prewar cabinets, which need waxing rather than replacing. White epoxy coated roller slides from the eighties and nineties, which wear out and are still available. Ball bearing undermount slides, which are what we fit as an upgrade. Changing epoxy slides for ball bearing ones transforms how a kitchen feels for very little money.
Drawer boxes coming apart at the corners
A drawer that rattles and drops its front has usually failed at the corner joint, where staples have let go in a butt jointed box. Glue and clamps fix it properly if the box is solid wood or plywood. Particle board boxes that have swollen with water do not come back, and a new box on the existing front is the better spend.
The cabinet floor under the sink
Nearly every sink base we open has taken water at some point. Swollen particle board, lifted veneer and a stain around the drain are the signs. The repair is to cut the failed floor out, fit a new plywood deck with a sealed edge, and go looking for the leak that caused it, usually at the trap or above at the kitchen faucet.
Water at the dishwasher and the toe kick
The second wet spot in a kitchen is the cabinet beside the dishwasher and the toe kick in front of it. Water tracks along the floor under the cabinet run and shows up as a swollen toe kick board with no obvious source. Toe kicks are a straightforward replacement in matching material once the leak is found and the cavity has dried out.
Soft close conversions
Soft close is available as a retrofit on most cabinets built in the last twenty five years, either as a replacement hinge with a damper or as a small clip on unit. On drawers it means new undermount slides. It is the single upgrade homeowners notice most, and doing a whole kitchen at once is a half day of work.
Melamine chips, lifted veneer and edge banding
Melamine chips at the door edge and veneer lifts at the corner where a dishwasher has steamed it for years. Chips get filled and coloured, veneer gets re glued and clamped, and failed edge banding gets replaced with matching tape and trimmed flush. None of it is invisible under a raking light, and all of it reads as tidy rather than as damage.
Painted cabinets and the finish that chipped
Painted cabinet doors chip at the edges and around the pulls, and touching them up with a brush shows every time. The repair is to fill, sand and spray the affected door rather than the whole kitchen, matched on the actual door. Our interior painting crew handles that, and a full re spray of a kitchen is a planned job rather than a repair visit.
Islands, end panels and the corner that gets kicked
The exposed end of a cabinet run and the back of an island take more abuse than any door. Dented and scuffed end panels can be skinned with a matching panel rather than replaced, which costs a fraction and reads as new. On a painted kitchen, the same panel gets filled and sprayed in place.
The hardware upgrade list
- Soft close hinges or dampers on every door
- Ball bearing undermount slides on every drawer
- Pulls and knobs sized to the door and the hand using them
- Drawer organisers cut to the box rather than bought to fit
- Shelf pins and supports replaced where shelves sag
Where repair stops and a new kitchen starts
Repair is the right spend when the boxes are sound and the layout works. Once the boxes are swollen through, the layout fights the room or the doors are a style nobody makes any more, money goes further on kitchen remodeling than on a series of repairs. We will say which one you are looking at on the first visit.
Shelving, storage and the rest of the carpentry
Cabinet work usually turns up alongside other carpentry in the same house. Shelving installation, closet shelving, furniture assembly and general trim and finish carpentry all come off the same crew and the same visit.
How long the work takes
Adjusting every door in a kitchen is an hour. Plugging and re fitting a dozen stripped hinge holes is half a day. A sink base floor, a toe kick and a set of drawer slides together is a full day. Landlords bundle it into rental turnover repairs and sellers into pre listing home repairs.
Book cabinet door and drawer repair with our crew
Open every cabinet in your kitchen and look at the gaps, then pull every drawer to its stop. Whatever you find is almost certainly worth a day of a carpenter rather than a new kitchen. We work across Dexter and the wider area, and an annual home check keeps the hardware tight. View our Portfolio, then contact us now for a free quote.
