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thepetris

Gap between drawer and cabinet face below microwave cubby in island.

Petri's
5 years ago

We just installed new cabinets and have a microwave cubby in the island. There is a gap between the drawer and cabinet face that you can see when looking down at the cabinet. The space may be due to the drawer stops, but we need them there to line up with the rest of the cabinets. Has anyone had this issue?



Comments (9)

  • live_wire_oak
    5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    All doors and drawers have bumper pads to keep them from making wood to wood contact. It does align with the adjacent cabinets. You just notice it more on that drawer because there is no drawer above. You’ll stop noticing it when the MW drawer goes in.

  • felizlady
    5 years ago
    Those drawer and door hinges are all adjustable. Look on YouTube for instructions or call the installer back for adjustments. Nobody else is going to look at the gap, probably. The fronts seem to be aligned.
  • PRO
    JAZ Design, Inc.
    5 years ago

    It appears that the lower drawer may not have bumpers? From looking at the photo the drawer on top seems to line up with the cabinet drawers to either side more than the drawer below. It is important that the faces are on the same plane, but the gap from bumpers is normal per comment above.

  • Fori
    5 years ago

    You need that drawer to close better. You'll get crumbs in it if you don't. (It's hard to tell what is going on here, though, but that drawer is definitely sticking out past the one below it.)

  • Petri's
    Original Author
    5 years ago

    We didn't get a microwave drawer. This is a cubby for a Microwave to sit in. There are bumpers on the drawer below and the drawer and cabinet faces all align. My photo may photo may just have been when one of the drawers was slightly pulled out. My husband installed the cabinets, so he isn't sure what to do. Also, we checked with Home Depot and they called the cabinet company and they didn't really have an answer either. We have microwaves installed like this at my company, but I don't think there's a drawer below.

  • live_wire_oak
    5 years ago

    “The drawers and cabinet faces all align.”

    Which is as it should be. The bumpers prevent that closer alignment. Because they are supposed to. Everything is working as designed. What you have is normal.

    On top drawers, where that situation also exists, the counter overhang prevents things getting behind the drawer face. You could potentially also put a piece of your counter material with an overhang in that cabinet as a base for the MW to sit on.

  • jpp221
    5 years ago
    This is common and simply solved. If you open a drawer and look at the tracks, there are some screw holes that are elongated (like an ellipse) and others that are circles. Screws in the circles are removed, and those in the ellipses are loosened, thus giving some wiggle room where the track can be moved a bit on the drawer box. Once the right spot is found, the screws in the round holes are put back in place to “lock” the drawer glides into their new position (which in your case is about ⅛” off from where they presently are). This is common stuff, and happens because in theory, our kitchens are perfect boxes with 90 degree angles and our cabinets are the same, but in practice, they are not and so things get a touch wonky (technical term, that) leading things to not lie flat or line up perfectly. So, the cabinets (and in this case, drawer guides) are designed to allow for some correction. (The same is true with hinges, by the way—the doors should all line up perfectly, and if not, there’s some similar adjustment warranted there.) It’s simple, but a bit tricky, so if you can’t figure out exactly how to do it the installer or any decent handyman should be able to do it. (The installer should do it at the time of installation, but sometimes as the house settles or drawers and doors get banged over time, a touch-up is needed.)
  • jpp221
    5 years ago
    @live_wire_oak: this drawer sticks out further than a bumper would require, and further than all the other drawers. This isn’t a normal protrusion caused by a bumper.
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