Greetings, The kitchen sink overflowed due to a block and the water went along the counter and into a drawer that is under the counter. The drawer was full for about 30 minutes, got drained, but now wont slide back in the sliders. This happened just last night, the drawers been open and airing since. Is there any way to get it to where it is sliding in and out again? not too many rollers, it seems to be that it's too tight between the rails.
thanks, N.
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Chuckle. My first apartment in this town had cheap cabinets like that, too. One day, I pulled the silverware drawer next to the sink open, and the damn thing just fell apart. It was stapled together, and the chipboard had soaked up so much ambient moisture (no actual flood), that the staples no longer held. I put the back corners back together with duct tape. Chipboard is okay as underlayment in dry areas, and the high-pressure stuff may be okay as a center layer in MDF, but melamine-covered or naked chipboard is a lousy structural material.
You're basically screwed. Set the drawer out in the sun, with enough weights and bar clamps to keep it square and the joints tight, and hope for the best. Once it is completely dried out, try again. If the chipboard swelled, you may have to sand the surfaces that contact the glides or rails. Rub a candle stub over any touch points that don't feel smooth to the fingertips.
If this your house, and not a rental, start saving for a new kitchen. And look for cabinets that don't use chipboard other than maybe for skin panels that aren't edge-fastened.
There is no place for chipboard anywhere in a cabinet.
I mostly agree with you, but unless you are a rich man, try finding modern cabinets that don't use at least MDF for the shelves, back and end panels. The better ones at least use rails and blocks in the corners, so they don't have fasteners going into the edge of a chipboard panel. My preference for Real Wood cabinets is why I plan to strip the horrible faux finish off the 1960 cabinets in this place, and try to salvage the original finish underneath. The faux finish appears to be water base, and ammonia cleaned a few test spots pretty well. I think previous owner (or his wife) just deglossed the old cabinets, and smeared away. If I can get the crap off, I can minwax the old finish, and get something respectable looking. Too bad they also put multiple layers of contact paper on all the shelves and drawer bottoms. No painless way to remove that crap.
Too true. I was about to place an order for some bedroom closets (very simple stuff, essentially just boxes with hanging rails and shelves, no doors or anything complicated). $2600, after shopping around on the internet for the best price/quality/reputation trade-off (about 20 feet of closet, in all). And that's just for laminated chipboard. I just couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger. Priced up the materials in Menards today, and I reckon I can do it for about
8-12 sheets of decent cabinet grade plywood and off-the-shelf hardware that I will need. No more than $500 for materials, and probably about a couple of weekends of my labor (most of which will be spent on staining/varnishing I am guessing). But they will be great material, sturdy, and I can tailor to meet my exact needs. I know the price of labor is high, but with high-volume production lines to handle the finishing etc, does it really have to be so expensive for decent materials?
????? I have purchased cheap cabinets that do not have any particle board. They have cheap plywood.
Is the drawer particle board? PB always swells when wet and, if wet enough, will start crumbling because some of the glue has dissolved. For starters, need to find whether the drawer or the frame has swelled and try sanding down whichever it is. I had a couple of bath cabinet doors that did this over the years previous to our residing...I eventually dug out the crumbling PB, filled with spackle and repainted. Of course, it wasn't a huge defect or the spackle would not have held.
We had a washer hose burst about a month after doing a major remodel of our kitchen....water about 1" deep at the worst in kitchen. Had we not been home or if we had PB cabinets, they'd have been trashed. We refaced our old built-in-place ply cabinets, and got the water cleaned up right away, so there was no damage.
I refinished dark oak cabinets for a friend of a friend, for hire. Going along very nicely until I got to the end panels, whereupon I discovered that the end panels were fake woodgrain on particle board. On the verge of both suicide and a nervous breakdown, I got out my art stuff and painted oak grain onto the end panels. The friend got more than her money's worth - if I painted to earn a living, I'd have starved long ago :o)
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