How to adjust kitchen cabinet doors

How to Adjust Kitchen Cabinet Doors

Over time, your kitchen doors can quickly become tired, worn and prone to excess damage. What most people don’t know is that adjusting kitchen cabinet doors is one of the easiest and cheapest fixes you can make towards home improvement. Take a look and follow these few simple steps on how to adjust kitchen cabinet doors.

Tools you’ll need when adjusting kitchen cabinet doors

Cabinet door adjustment is a fairly simple job. The only tool that is required is a standard screwdriver with a tip that fits to your cabinet screws accordingly.

Don’t use a power drill as this could accidentally slip and damage the door, especially if it is a wooden kitchen cabinet. If you feel more comfortable, you can always ask someone to be a second pair of eyes to make sure the cabinet is screwed on straight, but this isn’t always necessary.

Side-to-side cabinet adjustment

When it comes to adjusting your cabinet doors, the side to side adjustment is usually the most common fix that is required. It is important to make sure the door is not too tight or too close to the cabinet so you can easily open and close the door effortlessly. The most common sign that your door need this adjustment is when it won’t close properly

Move the door closer to the cabinet

To do this, all you need to do is turn the front screw on the cabinet hinge in a clockwise direction until it tightens and the door moves closer to the cabinet.

Move the door further away from the cabinet

Much like the previous adjustment, this adjustment is required when the door won’t close properly and sticks out away from your countertop. Although this isn’t as common as the latter, it is still required to make sure there is an even gap down the edge of the door when you look sideways on.

As stated previously, the front screw on the hinge is normally used to adjust door alignment. Begin by turning the front screw in an anti-clockwise direction until the door moves away from the cabinet. Be careful not to loosen the hinge too much; if you feel it is too loose, simply turn the screw back the other way.

Up-and-down cabinet door adjustment

This particular adjustment is usually required when the two screws on the hinge backplate are adjusted incorrectly which then allows the door to hand higher or lower than preferred. In order to adjust the door to the correct height, enabling it to close properly, begin by loosening the two screws. By doing this, it will then allow you to freely adjust the door, and the hinge backplate can be moved up or downwards to the preferred adjustment.

With this it is worth remembering that when you loosen the two screws the door will drop, therefore, it might be worth adopting the help of someone else to support the weight of the door whilst you carry out the adjustment.

Test the door

Finally, when learning how to adjust kitchen cabinet doorsclose the door and make sure your adjustment has successfully improved the efficiency of the door hinge. This will allow you to determine whether it needs further adjustment and, if so, adopt a trial-and-error process in order to fine tune the fix.

Browse our extensive range of fitted kitchen styles and cabinets or contact our team today to find out more.At Lark & Larks, we offer a range of styles and sizes of doors, including made to measure kitchen doors