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Are you looking for an easy and effective way on how to adjust old cabinet door hinges? It’s hard to tolerate when your old cabinet can’t open smoothly, or when it makes extremely annoying noise when functioning. These problems are usually caused by loose screws or unaligned cabinet hinges.
If you are experiencing these problems, you don’t need to stress yourself too much. There is an easy way of adjusting cabinet hinges of old cabinet doors by yourself in a matter of minutes!
Check out our complete guide below on the different ways of adjusting cabinet door hinges step by step.
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Before you start adjusting the old cabinet hinges, you must first determine if the hinges are adjustable or not because the adjustment method would be different.
If your cabinet door hinges have mounting screws and at least two additional screws, they are fully-adjustable. This means they can be adjusted in three different ways – up and down, in and out, or side to side.
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Meanwhile, many old cabinets have basic hinges that are not adjustable. This is common among surface-mount cabinet hinges and they are attached to the front of the cabinet, rather than in the cabinet box or the edge of the cabinet frame. If your hinges are non-adjustable, you need to move them to shift the doors.
The only thing you will need when adjusting old cabinet hinges is a standard Phillips screwdriver with a #2 screw tip. Take note that you should not use a power drill when doing the adjustments as it can damage the cabinet wood and screw heads!
While you can do this on your own, you may ask someone to assist you to make sure you got everything right.
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Source: Wonder How To
With all the tools needed, here is a simple and detailed guide on how to adjust old cabinet door hinges properly.
Open your cabinet door and check the hinge mounted to the cabinet box. Tighten the two mounting screws that hold the hinge with your screwdriver.
If tightening the mounting screws did not solve the problem or the door is too low or high, check the screw that adjusts the cabinet door up or down.
If you cannot find any screws for this, loosen the two mounting screws again with your screwdriver.
Sometimes, the cabinet mount becomes misaligned, which causes the cabinet door not to shut properly.
Then, adjust the door to its intended height. Retighten the mounting screws and close the door.
Wood doors tend to get distorted because of humidity changes, causing doors to pull away from the cabinet box at the bottom or up, instead of joining the box flush once the door is closed. This causes the cabinet door to rebound when closing.
If this is the problem, use the depth screw to move the cabinet door in or out that corresponds to the cabinet box. Then, readjust the top hinge towards the cabinet or readjust the bottom one away from the cabinet. If there is a gap on the door at the bottom area, do the opposite of this step.
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Using the side-to-side adjustment, move the door left or right to align the cabinet door with the borders of the cabinet box.
Adjusting door hinges can be on one or both hinges, depending on how much readjustment the door requires.
If the door appears to be shifting to the right, rotate the side-to-side screw on the above hinge so that the hinge gears towards the cabinet box. If this does not solve the issue, adjust the side-to-side screw on the bottom hinge instead so the hinge moves away from the cabinet box.
An important step to remember when adjusting cabinet door hinges is to test them. Close the cabinet door every time you make adjustments. This is to make sure that you are going in the right direction in fixing the cabinet door. Remember, the entire process is trial and error and fine-tuning is the answer.
Source: DIYPete
And these are the steps on how to adjust old cabinet door hinges. It’s not difficult, right? So the next time you experience problems with your cabinet doors, refer to this guide again to adjust closet door hinges properly!
If you are on the market for furniture fittings and hardware, we encourage you to check out our catalogs for corner cabinet hinges, wardrobe hinges, and concealed hinges among others. We also supply different types of drawer slides including under-mount slides, full extension slides, telescopic drawer slides, and more!
Thanks for reading!
RMGHardware is a professional cabinet hinge manufacturer who works closely with various well-known furniture brands, check out our blogs for tips and tricks around furniture hardware! Or contact us if you need help with sourcing hinges.