this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Regardless of what you do to fix the drawer, consider that its the weight of what you've got in the drawer that caused the failure. Consider either reinforcing the underside, and or waxing or lubing whatever the roller or mounting hardware is. The heavy weight causing drag is ultimately why this failed (along with it just being cheap as shit particle board).
When I've had this issue in the past, I've gone ahead and replaced and reinforced the whole thing with 1/4th inch plywood. You can run two dados up the face board and then run the plywood into those, then pin nail and glue.
Well, we had the bright idea of attaching 3m hooks to the inside of the drawer upside down, and hanging grocery bags from the outside to act as trash bags to swipe vegetable peels off the countertop (if that makes any sense). Coincidentally, we've decided not to do that anymore.
I mean thats what did this, without a doubt.
However, at this point, you need to reinforce the guts. Gluing and pinning are not going to be enough.
I suspect that what caused the failure is a lack of soft close. When closing a drawer, if the slide is smooth and doesn't have a stop, then the drawer front gets a huge impulse when it collides with the cabinet body. Since the entire kitchen likely has the same craptastic quality, the first step is to instruct everyone to close the drawers as gently as possible. Then consider retrofitting soft close mechanisms to the drawers. And maybe even start saving up to replace the cabinets because more failures are likely.
soft close would hurt but when mine failed, it was the weight of the crap warping the structure of the drawer that stressed the joins ultimately leading to failure. Effectively bowing it out from the inside.