When the drawer itself is failing — not the front, the box. We build solid maple boxes with dovetailed corners and hang them on full-extension undermount slides, inside the cabinets you already have.
You can't see inside a drawer from the showroom floor, so it's the first place a manufacturer saves money. Stapled particle board sides, a thin bottom in a shallow groove, and side-mount slides that stop three-quarters of the way out.
The bottom has dropped out of one, or is sagging and ready to.
A corner has let go and the whole box racks out of square when you pull it.
It only opens three-quarters of the way, so the back of the drawer is a mystery.
Something leaked once and the particle board swelled up and never went back.
Every drawer in the kitchen slams, and the slides grind on the way out.
None of this is visible once the drawer is closed, which is exactly why it's worth knowing what you're buying.
Hardwood, not particle board with a printed edge. It holds a screw, it survives a spill, and it doesn't swell when something leaks.
Interlocking joints that pull tighter as the drawer is used. A stapled corner is only as strong as the staples; a dovetail is as strong as the wood.
A proper thickness of plywood set into a groove on all four sides, so the load sits in the joint rather than on a few staples.
The drawer clears the cabinet completely. The back six inches of a deep drawer stops being storage you forget about.
Slides hidden beneath the box instead of bolted to the sides. You see wood when the drawer's open, and you gain the width the old side-mounts were taking.
The drawer catches itself in the last inch and closes quietly, every time, whether it's empty or full of cast iron.
Not every drawer in every kitchen is built badly — but if yours is from the eighties or nineties, this is usually the story.
This is a shop job rather than an ordered part — your boxes are built here in Palmer to the sizes we take off your cabinets.
Sometimes it's all of them, often it's the three that take the weight. We'll also tell you if new slides alone would fix it.
Cabinet opening, existing front size, and how the front is attached — because whether we can reuse it is usually decided by how it was fixed on.
Each drawer on its own line, with and without new fronts, so you can see exactly where the money goes.
Built in Palmer from solid maple, squared up and finished before anything leaves. Your old drawers stay in use the whole time.
Old boxes out, undermount slides fitted, new boxes hung and the fronts set flush and level across the run.
Gaps evened up and soft-close set, because a bank of drawers is judged on whether the lines are straight, not on one drawer alone.
The drawer front and the drawer box are two different things, even though they arrive as one. If your fronts are sound and you're happy with them, they come off the old boxes and go onto the new ones — you get the guts of a new kitchen without changing how it looks.
Usually, yes. The front and the box are separate parts even though they feel like one. If the front is sound and you like it, we take it off the old box and fit it to the new one.
The exceptions are one-piece moulded fronts, thermofoil that's lifting, and fronts that are split or warped. We check how yours are attached at the measure and tell you before quoting.
If the box is square and solid and only the action is bad, new slides alone will fix it for a fraction of the cost. We say so when that's the case — there's no sense selling you six boxes when six sets of slides would do.
New boxes are the answer when the material itself has gone: sagging bottoms, blown corners, swollen particle board.
Because of what a drawer does. Every time you pull one, you're trying to tear the front off the sides. A stapled joint resists that with a few fasteners; a dovetail resists it with the shape of the wood itself, and it actually tightens under load.
It's the difference between a drawer that lasts a few years of heavy use and one that outlasts the kitchen around it.
Often, and it's one of the biggest improvements you can make to a base cabinet. A door with a shelf behind it becomes a bank of two or three deep drawers that pull all the way out.
It does mean new fronts for that cabinet, since the door is gone — so it pairs naturally with a door project. If you'd rather keep the door, a pull-out shelf gets you most of the way for less.
No. Your existing drawers stay in the cabinets and in use the entire time the new boxes are being built in our shop.
The swap itself happens in one visit — old boxes out, slides fitted, new boxes hung and aligned. You empty the drawers that morning and fill them again that evening.
Raymond will look at them and tell you which it is — including when the cheaper fix is the right one.
Request a Free Quote →What each material is actually good at, and where the money goes.
Storage solutions for kitchens without a square foot to spare.
Simple upgrades that take decades off a dated kitchen.
Free quote, priced per drawer — and we'll tell you if new slides alone would do it.