How To Install New Drawer Slides

Acquire all my tips and tricks for installing cabinet drawer slides.

Drawers are so useful! They are my favorite role of a kitchen, desk, panel, and more. Only they tin can exist intimidating to install.

And so I partnered with Kreg Tools to share all my tips for how to install cabinet drawers using their awesome drawer slide jig.

I use all of the Kreg Hardware jigs on a regular ground! If y'all plan to make any cabinets in the new twelvemonth, you lot will definitely want to grab this kit to make your build easier.

Now let'south get down to installing some cabinet drawers! And for assist building your ain cabinets bank check out this post.

Tips for Edifice Drawers

The get-go part of a successful drawer install is a successful drawer build. You need to know what the requirements for spacing are for your drawer slides. It'due south a good idea to double check the specs of your drawer slides before edifice your drawers.

Well-nigh ball begetting drawer slides I accept used require ane/2″ spacing on either side of the drawer. So I congenital my drawers 1″ smaller than the cabinet opening.

Also, when building your drawers, I always err on the side of too small over to large. The drawer slides tin quickly be shimmed out a 16th or 32nd of an inch to fit a smaller drawer.

But to make a 1/16″ too broad drawer fit takes lots of time and is very aggravating.

Lastly, square drawers will fit so nicely into your cabinets. Then take the actress fourth dimension to gear up your saw blades & fences to perfect 90 degree angles and square up the ends of your boards before associates.

Having a bract or fence off by a couple degrees will quickly make a wonky drawer box that you will be fighting when it's time to install.

Picking the Correct Drawer Slides

In that location are and so many dissimilar options for drawer slides. I typically use ball-begetting drawer slides for a few reasons:

• they come in total extension (yay for finding things in the back of your drawers),
• they come up in soft shut,
• they slide smoothly,
• they can hold a lot of weight,
• they are usually in stock at home comeback or woodworking stores,
• they are a good mid-priced choice.

Full Extension

Full extension means that the drawer back is brought to front of the cabinet box when fully opened. This allows full access to the contents of the drawer.

Of course, if you have an overhang on your countertops (most commonly exercise) the back top drawers will exist slightly hidden behind the overhang. But it's barely noticeable because that is just an inch or so.

If you want fifty-fifty more admission to the items in your drawer, you can use over-travel drawer slides that extend the back of the cabinet an inch or so past the cabinet box.

We used an over-travel drawer slide for our pull out trash can cabinet. This allows us to lift the trash can out of the trash can drawer if needed because it brings the drawer out past the countertop.

And don't be tempted past the low toll of 3/iv extension drawer slides. If yous have ever been frustrated by older drawers that felt similar they stopped way too soon, that is a 3/4 extension.

Simply think, if your drawer is twenty″ deep, 5″ of that will still exist subconscious in the cabinet. This makes a big drawer feel so pocket-sized.

Soft Close

Soft shut is a feature that stops the drawer from slamming shut. Even better, after it stops the drawer, it slowly pulls the drawer to the fully closed position.

If you have kids, the soft close can come in very handy. No more slamming drawers and no more almost-closed drawers.

But if you are on a upkeep, you tin save yourself around $5 per pair of slides by not choosing the soft close option. And you lot tin can always upgrade slides afterward when yous have more money in your budget (and save the non-soft close slides for more projects!).

Weight Limit

Make sure to pay attention to the weight limit on your drawer slides when purchasing them. Large drawers can concur lots of items and so you want to make certain the slides can handle it.

Besides, accept into business relationship the weight of your drawer when figuring how much weight you demand your drawer slides to agree.

Watch the Total YouTube Video

How to Install Ball Bearing Drawer Slides

Tools Needed:

• Kreg Drawer Slide Jig
  • Become the jig in the Hardware Installation Kit and salve over 10% vs. buying them all separately. On auction through Dec 31, 2022 (or while supplies final).
• Drill and impact driver
• Clamps (2 are included in the kit)
• Kreg multi-mark tool
• Pencil

Supplies:

• Ball begetting drawer slides
• Drawer box
• Coverstock or cardstock newspaper
• Scraps of wood

Prepping the chiffonier for drawers

To install drawer slide, the side of cabinet needs to be flush with the side side of the opening. If you lot are installing drawers in frameless cabinets, this is already the case.

If you are installing drawers in a face frame chiffonier, y'all will have to do some additional work earlier you can install drawer slides since the face up frame (usually) volition have an overhang into the cabinet box.

You have ii choices to fix this, one is to apply the plastic clips made to work with face frame cabinets. The front end of the drawer slide is attached to the within of the face frame and the back to the clip.

The other option is to add a strip of flake wood within your cabinet where yous are installing the drawer slides to bring it flush with the sides of the face frame.

If you want to install overlay cabinet doors (where they sit on top of the face frame) you tin can use either method. If you want to install inlay cabinet doors (where they sit inside the face frame) you tin can only employ the 2d option.

I prefer using the 2d option all the time. I ever have scraps of woods laying around that I can utilize for drawer slide blocking.

And since I like to use make full my drawers full and use them oft, I am worried those plastic clips will not concord up to lots of heavy employ and abuse. The wood blocking definitely does!

The cabinets I built for our new kitchen are a mix of frameless and face-frame cabinets. I am installing inlay cabinet doors, but still wanted the classic look of the face up frame cabinet.

So I made my face frames only ane″ wide. That way the inside of the face frame is flush with the inside of the chiffonier and the extra 1/iv″ (since my cabinets are built with 3/iv″ plywood) give me some jerk room when it comes to installing them.

And bonus, it makes it easy to install drawer slides without any boosted blocking or clips. But even if you have confront frame or frameless cabinets, installing the slides is the aforementioned!

Taking the slide apart

Before you can install the drawer slides, you lot demand to have them apart. To do this, pull the two pieces apart until they stop.

Then await for the blackness plastic tab on the inside of the drawer slide. Pinch this tab toward the side of the drawer slide to release the two pieces.

I observe yous demand to pinch the tab and press them slightly together again, then pull apart to get the slides to release.

Set aside the within pieces. They will be installed on the drawer box later.

Installing the lesser drawer slide

If y'all are installing drawers in a drawer base of operations without a cabinet on bottom, the install of the bottom drawer is a lilliputian dissimilar.

You cannot employ the Kreg drawer slide jig for the install since you lot need the drawer slide closer to the lesser of the chiffonier. Instead, use a couple pieces of scrap woods to concur the slides off the lesser of the cabinet.

I use 1/2″ baltic birch plywood to build my drawer boxes out of, so I always accept a few chip pieces of it laying around. This works perfectly for a spacer when installing the bottom drawer slide.

Lay the outside part of the drawer slide on summit of the scrap wood.

• If installing overlay doors, the front of the drawer slide should be flush with the front of the face frame.
• If installing inlay doors, set the front of the drawer slide back the thickness of your drawer front (mine are three/4″).

When installing the drawer slides, I like to use the holes in the tabs sections of the drawer slide. These will allow a trivial flex as the drawers are installed.

Drill a airplane pilot hole in the hole in the front tab of the drawer slide. Make certain information technology is centered in the hole.

Then secure it with i of the screws that came with your drawer slides.

At present repeat with 2 more than screws (1 in the center of the slide and one toward the dorsum). Make certain to use the screw openings on the tabs again.

You might have to motion the slide in or out to reveal these holes in the slide.

Be careful not to crash-land or move your slide every bit you install the screws. Double check the slide is flush against the plywood scrap and properly spaced on the front as y'all go.

Repeat for the slide on the other side of the chiffonier.

Installing the upper drawer slides

Any drawers not on the bottom will exist installed the same way using the handy Kreg drawer slide jig.

For face frame cabinets: pull out the gray tab on the top of the drawer slide jig forward. As well, pull out the side tab out too.

Place drawer slide jig A on the right side of chiffonier and B on the left. The tab on the top should rest on summit of the face frame rail and the tab on the side should sit upward against the wall.

Clamp it to the face frame.

For frameless cabinets: do not pull out the tabs. Place drawer slide jig B on the right side of cabinet and A on the left. Clamp them to the side of the cabinet to secure.

You can clamp both jigs on at the aforementioned time, but I find myself bumping up confronting the ane I am non using as I attempt to maneuver within the cabinet. And so feel free to practice i at a time!

For my face frame/frameless cabinet hybrid: I used drawer slide jig B on the correct side and A on the left (like frameless cabinets). And then I used the top tab over the face frame and clamped them to the confront from (like face frame cabinets).

I did have a small claiming with the weight of the drawer slide causing the dorsum of the drawer slide jig to occasionally drop downwards because there was not a face up frame for it to but up against. Only I just e'er double-checked that the bottom was flush with the face frame before securing the back screws.

Drill pilot holes in the screw positions on the tabs (just similar you did with the bottom shelf).

Add screws in the front, middle and back to secure. Then repeat for the other side and any other drawer slides you need in your drawer base of operations.

This is also how you lot would adhere drawer slides to any base chiffonier that has just a single drawer above the cabinet.

Installing the drawer box

If yous look at the instruction manual for the drawer slide jig, it will show yous how you tin can clamp the jigs so they protrude in forepart of the cabinet. So y'all tin balance the drawer box on them and attach the other office of the slide to it.

I find this a niggling challenging with large kitchen drawers (which are the merely kind of kitchen drawers I like!). And so instead I easily attach the slide to the drawer box earlier I insert it into the cabinet.

Using my Kreg multi-mark tool, I place the second piece of the drawer slide on the side of the drawer box. I figured for my drawer slides, I needed to infinite the bottom of the slide 3/8″ above the lesser of the box.

The forepart of the drawer slide needs to exist affluent with the front of the drawer box.

In one case it was all placed properly, I used a pencil to mark where to drill my airplane pilot holes.

The I drilled right in the center of my marks.

And finished with adding the screws to secure it.

Then flip the box over, use the scraps of plywood to balance the drawer box without having information technology teeter on the slide.

Secure the other slide in the same manner, brand sure the slide is mirrored so the forepart is on the front of the box.

And so slide information technology into the drawer sides in the cabinet. You desire the slides on the box to slip into the notches on the slides in the chiffonier.

The slide will be tough to push in the kickoff time re-connecting the slides. But push it in all the mode.

And so check your drawer slide installation by opening and closing the drawer a few times. Information technology should slide nicely!

Adjusting every bit needed

If your drawers exercise not slide easily, information technology is fourth dimension to adjust.

If you lot are having trouble connecting the two pieces of the slides because the drawer box is slightly also small, cut a piece of cardstock about 1″ ten 4-five″.

Depending on how much you need to shim the slide out, fold the slice of paper in half, thirds or fourths. Loosen up the screws on your slides and tuck the slice of paper next to the tabs that the screws are in.

Rescrew in the screws and retest your drawer. It should be easier to connect the two pieces and things should slide smoother. Proceed to tweak as needed.

If the front of your drawer is non flush with the front of your cabinet, y'all may need to motion the drawer slides slightly higher or lower on the box (or cabinet) to tilt it properly.

Loosen the screws and adjust as needed. You can also add together new pilot holes to unlike screw holes if needed.

Reinstall your drawers and check over again.

Once you get the hang of it, you will have less and less adjusting that needs to exist washed. Merely fifty-fifty after installing and then many drawers in 3 DIY kitchens and many projects, I still take some days that I struggle with them. So don't go discouraged.

Sometimes yous only need to take a suspension and come dorsum at it afterward with fresh eyes (this is true for then many parts of woodworking and DIY!).

Simply now I am loving all the useful storage that the drawers gave us in our kitchen. I have many more drawer fronts to install and withal need to brand all my cabinet doors… but anytime I will be able to call this project done!

And don't forget to grab your own drawer slide jigs in the Hardware installation kit. Or grab them for someone you love for the perfect present for a DIYer 😉

Thank you to Kreg Tools for sponsoring this post. I only recommend products that I use and love and all opinions are 100% my own. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

Source: https://housefulofhandmade.com/how-to-install-cabinet-drawers/

Posted by: wilsoneand1939.blogspot.com

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