Very often, a chest of drawers in the basic design does not provide the required level of strength, which is why the panels are deformed, fasteners loosen faster, drawers slide out or fall out worse, guides fly off, a shelf falls. This means that the frame should be strengthened. For example, replace a thin bottom made of plastic or fiberboard with a similar thickness made of lacquered plywood or laminated chipboard. Strengthen the back wall in the same way. If you plan to heavily load furniture, it is recommended to additionally tighten the joints (facade - side wall, back wall - frame) with corners.
Loose handles of the chest of drawers, sagging or torn hinges, broken locks, latches and closers cause a lot of inconvenience. Fittings that have not lost their attractiveness are easy to fix with their own hands. For repair, parts are removed, and then screwed again, making sure that the holes do not coincide with the old ones.
If it is impossible to repair because of the size or geometry, you will have to fill in the old holes and carry out a complete restoration of the selected area or facade.
Cracked handles need a complete replacement, and worn ones need new painting and varnishing. Closers and clamps are checked for functionality, dismantled, cleaned and lubricated, and then reinstalled and adjusted. Broken locks are easier not to fix, but immediately replace with new ones.
VIDEO How to carry out a qualified repair of old drawers. Do-it-yourself furniture restoration is a fascinating and interesting process. So, old boxes need qualified repair and restoration.
Drawers, for example a desk, are usually overflowing with a wide variety of papers and objects, while they are quite often and abruptly pushed and pushed in. Naturally, they wear out quickly. Slots appear, guides are erased, side walls break, back stops fall out, and so on. So, old boxes need qualified repair and restoration.
Before starting work, you should carefully inspect the boxes in order to understand the design of the guides and sliding surfaces, as well as to make sure they need to be disassembled and repaired.There are several assembly methods depending on the purpose of the furniture and the placement of the drawers.
For any restoration work, first of all, it is necessary to refresh the tree, that is, to carry out preventive work: to eliminate cracks, fungus, traces of insect activity.
First of all, you need to make sure that the furniture is strong and sufficiently rigid. When the drawers are completely closed, check that the rails on which they slide are securely fastened. The absence or presence of distortions of the frame is easily checked using a plumb line and a level. Even slight wear on the leg makes the entire frame unstable and disturbs its horizontal position, which makes it difficult to slide in and out the drawers, and accelerates the wear of the tree. In such cases, the furniture must be disassembled and re-glued after the defects of individual parts have been eliminated. The lower part of the box is fastened without gluing in the grooves, with a few nails at the back wall.
Over time, the lower part of the boxes wears out the most. Changes in the original dimensions perpendicular to the grain direction of the wood can be up to 5%, as a result, the bottom attached by nails to the back wall of the box can form a small gap with its front part. Therefore, joiners are in the habit of leaving a small margin at the back of the bottom. In this case, it is enough to pull out the nails, push the lower part of the box forward, then insert it into the grooves of the front part and hammer in the nails again. If the bottom consists of two planks that are stuck together, make sure they are securely glued before replacing the bottom. If the stock is not initially provided, a small wooden spacer is used to close the gap.
Spikes: the spike joints are easy to disassemble, but the spikes themselves rarely break. Separate them carefully with a wedge and mallet. Joinery or fish adhesives are usually used for joining. Remains of old glue can be removed fairly easily with hot water and a brush. After cleaning and drying the parts, glue them again using the recommended types of adhesives.
Side walls: the presence of grooves makes the lower part of the side walls of the box most susceptible to wear. It is here that you can often see cracks, and worse, chips. In order to preserve the old wood as much as possible, the chipped pieces can be glued with a fairly strong polyvinyl acetate (PVA) glue. Its use is recommended only for fastening parts that should not be disassembled in the future. To preserve the color scheme of wood, PVA glue can be tinted with a pumice stone. Reinforce the restored parts with small bamboo thorns. Do not use nails: as a result of wear on the wood, their heads can protrude outward and damage the slide guides.
If a chipped piece of wood is lost, carefully use a small hacksaw to clean the chipped area and glue a new, specially cut and appropriate piece of wood to it.
The most common wear is the bottom ribs of the sidewalls at the back of the box. They can bend or even break. If this is the case, align them and then glue on the appropriate, carved wood, thin gasket. When processing the outer part of the side wall, you cannot use a classic plane; to remove a minimum layer of wood and level the surface, a chisel or a special small plane is more suitable, the front part of which is removed, and the cutting blade slides in front of the tool.
To restore the side panel of the drawer, cut a thin spacer from suitable wood with a small margin to fit. Then glue, and after the glue dries, cut off the protruding parts.
Using a ruler, mark a cut line on the side of the box in such a way as to preserve the old wood as much as possible. For convenience, place the drawer vertically on a workbench.
Guides: they are attached to the side walls of furniture and consist of several parts.The guide block is glued into the grooves of the uprights or furniture legs and serves as a support for the drawer. His sides always stand out.
The guide bar is attached to the sliding surfaces and, when moving, gives the box a parallel direction with it. The length of the block should be approximately equal to two-thirds of the length of the box. At its base, from the side of the box, a bevel is made at an angle of 45 to facilitate processing with a plane when it is installed on the slide guide.
Finally, the compensating bar rests on the top of the side walls and prevents the drawer from swinging when fully open. At the rear, opposite the rack, there is a small wooden stop that limits the movement of the drawer in depth.
Slides made from soft wood tend to wear down furniture. After dismantling, they can be turned over and used again. Thus, the need to cut and glue the spacer will disappear, and the furniture will be better preserved.
If you cannot remove the guides, you will need to plane the supporting surface and install a spacer. But using a planer in tight spaces is difficult and sometimes impossible. In this case, it is possible to recommend cleaning the area with a defect, applying a polymer resin (ED-5 or ED-6) to it and glueing a thin wooden plate.
A small addition: adjust the guide a little higher than the crossbeam of the front part, if it is attached. This way it will not be damaged when you open the drawer. Missing or worn out guides must be replaced, as they are absolutely necessary for the normal operation of the furniture. Loose stops must also be secured in place or replaced.
Broken or lost screws, empty mounting holes indicate poor performance of drawer locks. Replace the locks using new retaining screws and pre-cleaning and lubricating.
Damage to home furniture occurs quite often and for various reasons. Repairing a chest of drawers, replacing rails or refurbishing a polish can cost a lot if you take it to a special workshop. It is much cheaper to fix the furniture yourself, but it does take some dexterity and skill.
Whatever the quality of the assembly of the chest of drawers, there are many reasons why structural problems may arise. Most often, the guides of the inner drawers fail. The reasons for their breakdown are:
Exceeding the permissible load.
Incorrect installation of the guides.
Exceeded service life.
Deformation of some parts of the structure during improper use or transportation.
The frame of the drawers can also break, although this happens much less often. The most vulnerable place is the bottom of the box. Most furniture manufacturers save on this construction space and attach the bottom to the sides of the drawer. This greatly simplifies the production technology, and the bottom becomes a supporting part, which takes on the role of a part that forms the geometry of the frame.
In this case, the reason for the breakdown is insufficiently strong fastening of the bottom to the structure. The bottom is fixed with small studs at the front and back of the box, and guides hold it on the sides. For a while, the structure works properly, but over time, the nails loosen. The bottom begins to flake off. Repairing a breakdown is not so difficult.
You shouldn't use nails to fix a dresser drawer, even though it's the cheapest material. In order to repair wooden boxes with your own hands, it is better to use furniture staples. You will have to purchase a stapler for furniture. The tool, together with the staples, is slightly more expensive than nails and a hammer. If the box will not be subjected to heavy loads, then 8 mm staples will be enough for reliable fastening.
They are easy to work with.They are poorly deformed and penetrate to a sufficient depth. For a more reliable and durable fixation, use staples with a length of 10 mm. To make the bottom as strong as possible, they purchase hardened nickel-plated brackets. They are highly durable and non-corrosive.
To replace the rails, you will need 3.5 mm screws. There are two variations in the length of furniture screws for this diameter - 15 and 30 mm. To install the guides, in most cases, 15 mm self-tapping screws will be enough, but if the chest of drawers is made of poor quality chipboard, then it is better to use 30 mm screws.
VIDEO Damaged furniture must be repaired as soon as possible. Further exploitation will lead to even greater destruction. Detachment of furniture veneer often occurs. The coating gives the headset a pleasant appearance. Furniture does not crumble or deform. Often, due to high dampness in the room, the top layer of the chest of drawers is covered with cracks and swelling. The material then flakes off.
In this case, it is necessary to repair the chest of drawers as soon as possible, until the inner layers of the wood begin to warp. First of all, the exfoliated veneer must be ironed with an iron through a sheet of paper.
If such a measure did not give a visible result, then a small cut will have to be made along the grain of the wood. After that, the edge of the veneer is raised and both sides of the cut are lubricated with glue. The adhesive that has seeped over the edge is immediately wiped off with a sponge. We recommend staining the seam. The final step will be to cover the cut with a colorless varnish.
In most cases, pull-out panels and furniture drawers are fitted with roller guides. They have only two points of support (roller) located on the supporting part of the structure. For this reason, the guides are not very reliable and often fail.
It is best to replace such fittings with ball elements. In their design, there is a one-piece middle block on which small balls are located. These guides are nearly impossible to install incorrectly. They allow the drawer to be fully extended and firmly fixed in the closed position.
To change the guides, you first need to take out the drawer and remove the old hardware. Such fasteners are fixed with 2-3 screws.
Important: the ball guides must be parallel to each other. This is the most difficult and most important nuance of the installation.
To do everything right, they first make markings on the frame of the chest of drawers and on the drawers. With the help of a building level, they make sure that the fasteners are located strictly horizontally. After aligning the guides, secure them with 15 mm screws.
Repairing drawers is easy. To restore the bottom, you will have to remove the old mount. After that, the bottom is shot with staples around the perimeter. The fasteners must touch the side walls. It is necessary to ensure that the geometry of the structure is not violated. Therefore, the sides of the box are shot sequentially with staples.
Published by admin in Repair 12/30/2017 0 270 Views
In the modern market for furniture offers, you can find many types and designs of boxes. But we are not interested in their appearance now. No matter how high-quality the guides and no matter how high-quality the assembly, there are many cases when problems begin to arise over time. This happens most often
when the load is exceeded
incorrect installation of the guides
exceeding the effective service life
deformation of individual parts during operation
The problems cited relate to the mechanics used in modern drawer furniture. With the box itself, the design - there are fewer problems. Let's dwell on them first.
The most common problem is the bottom of the drawer. There are two types of fixing the bottom of the drawer. We can safely say that 90 percent of manufacturers simplify manufacturing and make an overhead bottom, which is attached to the bottom of the box.Attaches along the perimeter to the sidewalls. This greatly simplifies the technology, the bottom becomes another supporting part, which also takes on the role of a detail that forms the geometry of the box box. What to do if there are problems with this type of bottom attachment.
Most often, the reason is insufficiently strong and thoughtful fasteners. The bottom is fastened with studs to the front and back, and guides hold it from the sides. At first, such a scheme works quite well, but over time the nails loosen and the bottom comes off, even if the box is not overloaded. The way out is to replace.
Forget nails right away. Today, only the lazy and frankly stingy uses them. For repairs, the easiest and most effective way to use furniture staples. Furniture stapler is very inexpensive, staples are even cheaper. If your drawer doesn’t load “to the best of my ability,” 8 mm staples will suffice. It is easier to work with them without habit, they are less deformed and go deep enough. But if you are ready to pre-practice and fix the bottom more confidently, take the hardened staples 10 mm long. You can use hardened nickel plated - they are even stronger and do not rust. After - the procedure is simple. We remove the old fasteners and "shoot" the bottom along the perimeter with brackets. Under the guides too. Removing them is easy - they are attached with three screws on each side. In this case, it is necessary not to violate the geometry of the box, so punch the sides sequentially.
You can use screws if you are having trouble getting a stapler and staples. You will need 3.5mm screws. There are two generally accepted standards for the length of furniture screws of this diameter - 15 and 30 mm. In principle, 15 is enough. However, it may be that the box is made of low quality chipboard, which is porous on the inside, so it is better to use 30 mm screws.
Both of these methods are also suitable for replacing the bottom of the box - you will need to cut out the material of the desired size and fix it on the box of the box.
The second type of bottom attachment is a cut-in bottom. Most often, it is thin plywood, which is glued into the slots on the sides of the box. Such a bottom very rarely causes problems, in most cases they are caused by its destruction. If laminated fiberboard is used, you can face a situation where, due to plasticity, the glued zones are simply pulled out of the grooves. Such a "disease" can be treated a couple of times by re-coating the groove and gluing in place of the bottom, but it is still better to change it right away. This is not an easy procedure, but with some skill it can be done.
the box needs to be disassembled;
clean the grooves without disturbing their shape and thickness;
order or cut a new bottom part of the desired size;
reassemble the box by pasting in a new bottom;
give time for the glue to dry well. Do not overload the drawer.
If the box is assembled using self-tapping screws or confirmations, this can be done easily. However, if spike joints were used, it is better to turn to specialists for disassembly if you are not good at carpentry. The same actions are performed when it is necessary to replace the plywood bottom. If it is cracked, damaged, deformed, or has lost its appearance.
In the mechanics of pulling the drawer, several types of guides are used today. We'll look at two here. Transition types also exist, but units use them. Either as an experiment, or to improve functionality without reworking the basic design. We will not consider such types of fittings.
Advantages - simplicity, low cost, ease of installation, the design is such that the box closes under its own weight - the last few centimeters of closure - on a slope. Due to this, such guides are very widespread. The photo of the metabox clearly shows which part of the guide is intended for what.One is attached to the wall of furniture (small details in the photo, load-bearing), the second - to the structure of the drawer. In the case of a metabox, the second part of the kit forms the entire side wall of the box. A drawer with roller rails installed looks like this
However, the main disadvantage of this type of guide is incomplete extension. The drawer can be safely pulled out to about 75% of its depth. Let's see what problems can most often arise with such guides. Naturally, we will assume that everything was normal in the "freshly bought" furniture.
This problem is usually diagnosed immediately, even before the purchase. The box with the roller guide correctly installed according to the technical clearances moves smoothly, it has a fairly small horizontal clearance. It is easy to check - an almost closed box should be tried to "wiggle" left and right by the handle. If the backlash is more than three to five millimeters, the setting is incorrect. This can be caused by errors in the dimensions of the parts during the design, or it can be a technological error of the guide itself. It is no secret that in the modern furniture market there is a sea of small firms that save on literally everything. And cheap guides of dubious manufacturers often "walk" along the thickness of the gap.
Over time, this problem can arise due to deformation of the structure. A heavily loaded furniture box deforms if it is made from a slab of the wrong thickness. Again - the manufacturer saved and used the material without thinking about the safety factor.
Problems caused by changes in technical clearance are difficult to cope with. Here it is already necessary to interfere with the design, it is possible to do this in 90% of cases and it is not very difficult, but this is already another rather voluminous topic.
If the drawer does not close on its own when sliding under its own weight, this is an incorrect installation of the supporting part of the guide. Most often it is not installed horizontally. The front part does not need to be touched during such repairs - we do not want to mess with the appearance of the gables of the boxes. We unscrew the fasteners - except for one point near the very front roller, we align, screw it into place. We do this with the part of the guide, which is located on the furniture wall.
This problem is not as rare as it might seem. The reasons can be as trivial, like “the manufacturer saved money” or “well, they put a lot of things,” or non-standard - children simply love to climb the handles of dresser drawers like on a ladder or use them as a support to climb higher. And since the last thing they save on now is the handles, the guide suffers.
The problem can be solved in two ways. The main feature is the front wheel of the support part of the guide, the one on the furniture wall, "twists" - the plane ceases to be vertical, the metal in the attachment area is deformed and the wheel begins to cling to the second guide. You can return the wheel to its original position. It is not worth hitting with a hammer, the roller can simply be split, but with the help of a vise, holding the sleeve, you can give the original position of the part.
However, more often this problem is caused by the manufacturer. There are two main applicable standards for metal thickness for such guides - 0.5 and 1 mm. The manufacturer could simply save money. Replacing the guides with thicker ones is not a problem - all the places of the fasteners match. It is enough just to remove the old ones and replace them with new ones.
The same "diseases" and the older brothers of the roller guide - the metaboxes. If it seems to you that this will not help either, replace the roller guides with telescopic ones. This is quite easy to do. Below we will talk about roller guides.
There is nothing you can do about it. The rollers are plastic, over time they simply wear out. Backlash appears, the drawers do not open so confidently anymore. There is only one way out - to replace.You can, of course, use silicone lubricants for a while, but this will not solve the problem.
This can happen if the rails are carelessly installed. There are not enough anchorage points on the load-bearing part on a furniture wall, for example. Then the guide bends, the connections are loosened, this is tracked almost immediately. In order not to face such a problem out of the blue, ask the seller to pull out the box and make sure that the guides are attached at all points provided by the design.
The same problem can occur when the load is exceeded. In this case, the lack of proper rigid attachment will only aggravate the development of the situation. It is easy to “cure” the details - most often it is enough for the details to return to their original shape and fix them properly.
The second type of guides is ball. Or the "telescope" type. And their older brothers are "tandemboxes". They are more expensive, but devoid of all roller diseases. Therefore, they are often used by those manufacturers who value quality more than economy. They look like this
The ball bearing can handle many times the mass. In the roller - two points of support - rollers on the supporting part and part of the box. In a ball ball there is a whole block (middle), on which small balls are located according to the principle of a rolling bearing. Plus, the thickness of the metal from which the parts of the guide are made is much higher. Three more notable advantages - such guides are almost impossible to put incorrectly, they allow the drawer to be pulled out to its full depth and make it possible to rigidly fix the drawer when closed. In addition, ball guides can be installed at any height in the structure.
The retractable structure is not to be envied - it is often pushed and pushed in. It so often happens that we simply do not calculate the strength somewhere in a hurry or late. That is why the functionality of the drawers suffers. Sooner or later, the mechanism will not withstand such a load, and various cracks, worn out guides, broken side walls, falling out rear canvases appear in the structure. The repair of drawers of the chest of drawers will help to return them to their former location and performance. This is what we are going to talk about today. In our article, you will learn about the most common problems with pull-out furniture, how to fix them, and also get acquainted with the basic recommendations for the reconstruction of drawers.
The most problematic place of the retractable structure is the bottom. We can safely say that 90% of manufacturers moderately simplify the manufacture of furniture by reinforcing the drawer with an overhead bottom, which is located on the bottom of the sliding mechanism and on the sides. This configuration greatly simplifies the technological process, and the bottom takes on the entire load of not only the items put, but also the pressure of the sliding elements.
How to fix a chest of drawers with a similar type of bottom fixing? The most common cause of breakdown was insufficiently strong and poorly installed fasteners. The bottom is fixed with nails to the front and back of the box, and several guides hold it on the sides. Yes, indeed, at first such a scheme works quite well, but then it fails: the nails begin to loosen, and the bottom moves away, even if the chest of drawers is not overloaded. Let's figure out what and how you can repair this breakdown:
Staples. This is a great option for retrofitting retractable furniture. For work, you need to take special hardened staples 1 cm long. In this case, you can safely use nickel-plated hardened staples - they are even better than the previous ones: they are very durable and do not rust at all. It is a real pleasure to work with this type of fastening. To do this, you will need to remove the old fasteners and drill the bottom with staples around the entire perimeter of the structure, grabbing the area under the rails.
Important! Removing such staples will not be difficult for you. They are held by three screws on each side.Punch the sides of the box in a strict sequence so as not to break its geometry.
Screws. If you find it difficult to get staples or a construction stapler, then the screws will be your salvation in the repair of the drawer. For work, screws with a diameter of 3-4 mm and a length of 15 to 30 mm are best suited. In order to repair the drawers in the kitchen, you just need to take a screw 15 mm long. However, in the case of working with a porous chipboard sheet of poor quality, it is better to stock up on a 30 mm screw.
The two most common methods given are also suitable for replacing the bottom of the drawer - it will be necessary to cut out the material of a suitable size and fix it with the above material on the furniture box.
The second type of bottom fixing in furniture is a cut-in bottom, which is most often plywood, which is glued to the walls of the box. Manufacturers rarely use this method of fastening, but it still exists. Such a bottom very rarely causes problems and in most cases they occur due to its destruction. So, if manufacturers used laminated chipboard for the bottom of the chest of drawers, then you, for sure, are faced with the situation of tearing out the glued zones from the grooves. Of course, they can be put in place using the methods described above for attaching the overhead bottom, but it is better to change the chipboard canvas.
We figured out how you can quickly and easily repair drawers yourself. In some cases, there is no longer any option than a complete underbody replacement. Let's discuss what is not recommended to do this kind of work:
Nails. You should forget about this option, as it does not work at all. Today, only the lazy use nails to repair their furniture. Due to the fact that over time the wood can change its previous shape, the nail heads will crawl out and damage the guide mechanism. No matter how long the nails are, they will not hold the structure as firmly as, for example, building braces.
Glue gun. It is not suitable for one simple reason - the glue will not hold the bottom of the pull-out furniture well, since it is not able to withstand so many heavy loads. When using hot glue to repair a drawer, you may encounter the problem of the composition leaking out of the bottom.
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Today we will show you how to repair a drawer of this design yourself:
Compensating bar.
The bottom of the box.
Drawer side.
Side guide.
Slide guide.
The very first thing you need to do is answer these questions:
Which parts of the furniture structure need repair?
How are the drawer guides and sliding surfaces arranged?
After you answer the above questions, you will need to do the following:
Check the strength and rigidity of the retractable furniture, the reliability of the fastening of the rails.
Determine with the help of a level or plumb line if there is a skew of the retractable mechanism. If you find it, then check the reason for its appearance. Sometimes this is due to improperly adjusted legs. Then you need to disassemble the furniture, eliminate the cause of the identified distortion and reassemble the structure. The presence of a skew significantly wears out the chests of drawers, which will then become difficult to move in any direction.
Important! If your box is made of natural wood, then in the process of repairing it, clean the surface of the fungus, seal holes and cracks, and at the very end, cover the furniture with a special protective agent.
Most often, the problem with retractable furniture is in its lower part. The bottom, made of plywood, decreases over time, gaps appear, where all small items from the box fall. Experienced manufacturers, knowing about this problem, install the bottom with a margin, where the excess material is hidden on the back wall of the box.It is thanks to this safety net that you can eliminate the gap by performing the following manipulations:
We take out the nails that hold the bottom of our box.
We push the bottom forward a little, insert it into the grooves of the front part. When performing these steps, do not forget to check if there is a gap between the bottom and the back of the dresser.
We hammer in nails.
Important! If the bottom of your drawer is made strictly to size, then cut out another canvas or put a small wooden spacer.
Determine the method of connecting the parts of the chest of drawers. If the “thorn-groove” method was used, then we insert a small wedge into the connection point and do not hit it hard with a hammer until all the elements are soaked. After disconnecting all parts, remove the remnants of the adhesive by treating the surface with a wet brush. After checking the box for dryness, we collect all its parts, simultaneously adjusting the two side guides.
Most often, the side walls of drawers suffer from cracks and chips. So, if we found this chip, then we need to glue the fallen off part with ordinary PVA glue, and then paint the surface with pumice. If you did not find a breakaway piece of material, then cut out a similarly shaped insert from wood and glue it to an empty space. Detach the cracked parts completely and then glue them together.
Important! You can use the second option: pull the cracked parts as far apart as possible, apply glue to the inside of the damage and connect with clamps.
Using an example, we will look at the old classic options, time-tested, - wooden guides, which are fixed on the sidewalls from the inside of the box and have a bevel. Let's look at how to restore these guides:
We remove the guide, which requires repair. We turn it over and put it back in its original place.
If the guide does not want to be inserted in any way, then we go through the plane along its surface and attach the gasket.
But if we didn't manage to walk with a plane, then we clean and apply polymer resin (ED-5 or ED-6) to the guide, press down on top with our hand and put a thin wooden plate.
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If you can't get the nails out of the box due to the fact that they are very rusty, then use a special hacksaw for metal and cut off the head of the nail. After this procedure, you can easily remove the nails with pliers to get the bottom.
If, after disassembling the structure, you cannot remove the adhesive with a brush dipped in hot water, then remove it with a sharp knife or chisel.
If the drawer is covered with paint, and the parts are connected by the “thorn-groove” method, first remove the old coating with a hot hairdryer, and then glue the parts.
Before gluing the sides of the dresser, check if the tops and bottoms are even by placing a metal building ruler or level on them. If they are uneven, remove the beveled part with a plane.
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Now, for sure, it will not be difficult for you to do the repair of drawers with your own hands. We wish you easy work!
