How to replace drawer slides

How to replace drawer guides with your own hands
Damage to furniture in an apartment or house occurs quite often and for all sorts of reasons.

Repairing a wardrobe, chest of drawers, replacing the guides, or updating the polishing can cost you a lot of money if you hand over the furniture to specialized workshops.

Repairing furniture yourself will cost much less, but this will require special dexterity and basic skills. Let's talk about how to replace ball drawer slides.

Repair and replacement of drawer guides

Firstly, it is important to understand the causes of the breakdown.

If the fittings require replacement only because they have served their purpose, then everything is simple. Unscrew the old guides, measure their length and purchase exactly the same ones. Installation can be done in the same holes. I advise you to read about the restoration of chipboard - it is quite possible that in order for the fasteners to be strong, you will first need to putty the holes. Well, or choose thicker screws - not 3x16, but 4x16.

If the box initially “did not please” with trouble-free operation, constantly fell out, warped, or jammed, then most likely the guides failed prematurely. And simply replacing with new ones may not solve the problem. Here we need to eliminate the cause itself.

Correct operation of any retractable mechanism is possible only with the coaxial installation of the runners themselves (clearly opposite each other) and the correct geometry of the cabinet box and the drawer itself. And during operation, due to insufficient rigidity, heavy loads, or simply due to an uneven floor, distortions could occur.

Possible causes of failure:

Initially cheap and low-quality fittings. When purchasing, pay attention to the thickness of the metal. It is better to purchase guides from reliable brands.
Incorrect installation of guides. When replacing, re-measure all distances down to the millimeter so that the runners are installed clearly opposite each other.
The drawer itself is skewed. If the box is very large, then the fiberboard bottom does not help in maintaining the correct, clearly rectangular shape. It needs to be strengthened by adding rigid partitions to the box or replacing fiberboard with plywood.
The cabinet itself is skewed. It helps to solve the problem of leveling furniture using pads for supports. You can also install additional stiffening ribs into the design of the cabinet.
Heavy loading of the box. Perhaps the previously installed guides are simply not designed for such loads. Maybe it's worth changing them to other, more powerful ones?

What tools are needed to repair a chest of drawers?

To carry out repair work, both in general and components of furniture, you will need the following tools:

Screwdriver with a set of drills and bits.
Screwdrivers of different types.
Mallet.
Measuring tool and marker.
Nails and screws.
PVA glue.
Abrasive sandpaper.
Paints and varnishes.
Set of spatulas.
Set of hexagons.

Using the described tool will allow you to repair the chest of drawers without much difficulty.

Is it possible to replace one drawer system with another?

Usually this question is puzzled by those who purchased a budget kitchen set with drawers on roller guides, the quality of which is “not very good”. I would like to replace them with something better and generally different, more pleasant to use.

It happens that owners of expensive kitchens also think about replacing them. When the tandembox on the box is out of order, and you don’t really want to buy another one at a price of 7, 10 or more thousand rubles. Moreover, the drawer is not the most “important” and you can get by with simpler fittings.

In general, the reasons may be different. And there is one good news - yes, it is possible. There is no need to change the facades or the body of the cabinet with drawers. There may be a mismatch in fasteners. But since all fastenings are located on the inside of the facades and walls of the case, this will not be noticeable.

But regarding the drawer boxes themselves, everything is not so clear. After all, different retractable mechanisms may differ in both the size and design of the drawer.

Carpentry and painting works

After preparing all surfaces, it is necessary to carry out a full range of carpentry work. The specific type of repair depends on the condition of the furniture and its age, but almost all chests of drawers require strengthening the frame, replacing the bottoms of the drawers, and replacing the guide runners.

Additionally, you can restore the legs if they are broken or eaten by a bug: just strengthen them on the inside with thin pine bars and file the bottom edge.

Next, restoring a chest of drawers with your own hands includes painting. First, the wood must be covered with stain, choosing a shade to match the color of the wood. If you want to change the color of the furniture, you can tint the surface by choosing a stain lighter or darker by no more than 1-2 tones.

If you are restoring an old chest of drawers at home, the stain can be applied with a brush in three layers or rubbed with a rag. After it has dried, the entire surface must be coated with a transparent primer, and then final sanding must be done to achieve a perfectly smooth surface.

At the final stage, do-it-yourself restoration of an old chest of drawers includes decorative finishing. If it is painting, then the paint is applied with a brush; if upholstery, then the fabric is pulled under the stapler; if there is wallpaper or decoupage pictures, then they are glued and then varnished.

How to replace roller guides with ball guides

Standard ball and roller skids are interchangeable . To replace roller slides with ball slides, simply twist the slides, following the step-by-step instructions described in the last section of the article “How to Install Drawer Slides.” In this case, the holes on the sidewalls from the position of the roller guides will remain uncovered. They can be masked with self-adhesive plugs.

The exception is mortise-in full-drawout ball guides.

Unfortunately, they cannot be replaced with anything else, while maintaining the same dimensions of the drawer box. Only for a similar retractable system. Or saw the box frame to maintain the same gaps (read - calculating the size of the box for ball and roller guides).

The same can be said about narrow rail guides. They are also ball-shaped, but differ in design: the runners themselves are much narrower and the “balls” in it are arranged in one row, and not in two. It is unlikely that you will be able to find them on sale; they are usually used on foreign-made furniture walls and chests of drawers.

List of required tools

A drill or powerful cordless screwdriver with a chuck sharpened to at least 10 mm.
An electric jigsaw or someone you know from a furniture manufacturing company. Precise sawing will be required, so in this case it is better to find a friend. Right angles in future parts are required, and you should not risk the material for the sake of self-affirmation.
Roulette.
Pencil.
A straight construction angle, preferably with a measuring ruler.
Iron.
Drill bits 5 and 8 mm for wood.
Bits for a screwdriver. Among them there must be a hexagonal one - for confirmations.
Dull knife, rag, sandpaper.

Such tools will always come in handy. If you don’t yet have the necessary arsenal, you can safely buy a good one right away - so that you don’t have to throw it away later.

How to replace ball or roller guides with metaboxes or tandemboxes

It is not so easy to replace a drawer with ball and roller guides with tandemboxes or metalboxes (metaboxes). And this is quite obvious, because the design of the boxes themselves is completely different.

Therefore, you will have to completely saw down the parts of the box, taking into account the height of the existing facades, and assemble a new box for installation in the same cabinet.

Blum and tandem boxes are interchangeable . Therefore, you can always exchange one retractable system for another by choosing a suitable analogue.

And this is not the only “successful” coincidence in terms of savings. For almost any fittings from well-known brands in the premium segment, you can find cheaper analogues. Let me clarify: I do not address the issue of quality and feasibility of such savings.

A little about the advantages of designs

Despite the fact that sometimes drawers with such fittings can cause problems when they need to be removed or disassembled, they are all negated by the undeniable advantages of telescopic guides:

Compared to roller mechanisms - greater reliability and durability.
The ability to easily and quickly extend the drawer completely or only to the desired depth, which is definitely very convenient.
The cost of such a fittings system is an order of magnitude lower than tandem box analogues.

Types and causes of chest of drawers breakdowns

failure of guides,
breakage of boxes,
broken legs,
surface defects.

Our specialists will make professional repairs to the dresser guides, eliminate the causes of damage to the guides and restore the fastening.

Dresser drawer repair is necessary if its walls are damaged or the bottom falls out. Legs may break off if the furniture is moved too sharply and forcefully. For our service workers, there are no unsolvable problems or breakdowns that cannot be fixed. No matter what damage the walls or surfaces, legs or drawers receive, Myguru’s craftsmen will easily fix the problems and the product will work flawlessly for many years.

This is not a woman’s business: how I repaired a chest of drawers and wiped my husband’s nose

Our reader Natalya Petrenko from the Krasnodar region is a young mother and a very active housewife. Her video blog is full of recipes, travel impressions and practical advice. And Natasha prepared this material specifically for HouseChief on the topic of repairing dresser drawers.

Good afternoon I'm on maternity leave and many mothers will understand me. A strong half of my family is sure that since this is called “vacation”, then I’m relaxing on it. Little does he know that compared to his work, housework, and even with a small child, is hard work. I once drew my husband’s attention to the skewed drawers of the chest of drawers for linen. He reasonably noted that this requires the experienced eye of a furniture maker and suggested that I find a craftsman.

Read in the article

Do-it-yourself repairs are economical!

It’s not that I wanted to rub his nose in, but really, call a master for such a thing? Yes, I’d rather fix it myself, and with the money I save I’ll buy myself something nice. Looking ahead, I’ll say that the repair of two drawers cost me only 140 rubles, and by calling the phone number in the ad, the master said that just a call would cost 300 rubles plus materials and labor, a total of about 1200. My chest of drawers, of course, is not new, and four years ago, when we bought it, it cost 3500. Yes, that’s a third of its cost!

Detecting the Problem

Outwardly, it all looked bad, and the point is not so much in appearance, but in the fact that every day I had to struggle with this chest of drawers, rattling the drawers, in order to get things out. After I once again pinched my finger, I decided: that’s enough! It's time to take matters into your own feminine hands.

I started by looking for the problem. I had to take out all the drawers and inspect the guides.

This part simply crumbled under constant load. It's strange that this happened on one side.