Having been in the kitchen cupboard industry for many years, kids safety oftentimes decides how we should design something. If parents can secure dangerous items from the reach of children because of a special locking mechanism we installed, their young child will be better protected from harm. It has always been common practice for our sales personnel to offer installation of magnetic safety locks for cabinets that we manufacture.
Many customers decline because of the additional cost of installing the devices. When they do decide to not hire us for the installation process, we offer free instructions for how they can install these special locking devices themselves.
There are several styles of locks available which are designed to secure kitchen, bathroom, laundry room and office cabinetry form toddlers or young children. Just knowing that the kids cannot be able to access the interior of the cupboards will be worth the effort to get the cabinets secure.
Using External Cabinet Door Securing Locks
There are several brands and styles of this type of device. They are generally designed to work on double door cabinets. The mechanisms get placed around both hardware knobs or handles on the cupboard doors and then you snap or pull them tight. These work really well, but for appearance purposes they are not ascetically pleasing to the eyes. The cost is reasonable and there is not handyman abilities need to install them.
Cupboard Door Locks That Can’t Be Seen
These particular locks are designed to secure the cabinet doors using magnetic force. Once installed, they cannot be seen from the exterior of the kitchen or bathroom cabinets. The cost of this particular product is a little more than the external cabinet securing devices, but the benefit is that they cannot be seen. They do take a certain level of craftsmanship to install them.
Learning how to install magnetic locks won’t take very long. We actually have a video on our site that demonstrates how to secure your kitchen or bathroom vanity cabinets using this product. Don’t delay, make your cupboards safe so that you won’t have to be worried about the kids while you are in another room. Take the proper safety precautions now and get those locks taken care of.
There are a couple of securing devices that can be hidden that will work well with your kitchen cabinets. The favorite lock among most users is the magnetic cabinet locking device that will make your cupboards child proof. The other is the plastic type that you push down when the door is opened just a little bit. Both of these styles cannot be seen from the outside of the cabinetry.
In the spinning carousel above we have displayed many different styles of securing devices that will help keep children from getting into the kitchen or bathroom cabinets. These are all reputable brands and somewhat easy to install. read Hidden Kitchen Cabinet Lock
I recently was challenged with figuring out how to fix a few loose strips of maple real-wood-veneer that were on kitchen cabinets. The original contact glue apparently was loosing it’s bonding strength after about ten years. It was not just a fluke that these edges had started to peal away from the tall diagonal open shelf cabinet.
This article teaches the method for bonding an edge that has started pulling away from the cupboard. It is not intended to explain how to re-fasten a large piece of wood laminate that is coming off of a cupboard.
The Materials and Tools Needed for the Repair
This is a very frustrating situation when installing a cabinet and the wall has a hump in it. Sometimes the back will have a tendency to come off when you tighten the screws down. It may not separate from the cupboard sides entirely, but instead just pull away enough to be noticeable.
There are a few options available in relation to how you handle this frustrating situation.
1) Remove the installed cabinet and repair the damage
2) Leave the cupboard in place and caulk the gap on the inside
3 )Loosen the installation screws, while leaving the cabinet in place using clamps to fasten it to the surrounding cabinetry. Wedge shims between the wall and the cabinet back, forcing the gap to be lessoned. Leave the shims in place and re-install the screws. read While Installing a Cabinet the Back Came Off
If you are planning to strip the old Formica off of your cabinets it can be reused. Why would you want to remove the old plastic laminate from your bathroom or kitchen cupboards? Perhaps you have purchased a new refrigerator and it won’t fit in the opening. In this situation the cabinetry will need to be cut down. The same scenario can be applied to any new appliance that you have purchased. But, what if the original Formica is discontinued? You are only left with two options, try and salvage the existing plastic laminate or choose a similar color to the discontinued laminate, good luck. read Can Old Cabinet or Counter Formica Be Reused
IMPORTANT! Don’t get the refrigerator opening too small when you are installing your cabinets. Even though the space-size may appear to be large enough, some appliance doors will scrape against the wall if there’s not enough room. Much of this is determined by how the electric ice-box is designed. Although the unit may only be thirty five and three quarters inches wide, when the door is closed, it may require thirty six and a half inches of clearance when opening the door.
We have always allowed no less than thirty seven and a half inches in width whenever possible. Although some kitchen cabinet layouts are a little tighter than others, we have consistently tried to design the openings for the largest sized refrigerator unless the customer advised otherwise.
It is important to install your kitchen cabinets with great consideration to the appliance areas sizes. In many of the articles on this site we have suggested that you make sure that the refrigerator, range and dishwasher areas will work with the kitchen cupboard design before screwing anything fast to the wall. Proper planning and layout of these areas is crucial to the success of any kitchen installation. read Refrigerator Opening Size
How many hinges should be installed on the large door section of the tall kitchen cabinet? Most lower kitchen pantry cabinet doors are forty seven inches high. To help protect against the long piece of wood getting warped most manufactures install no less than three hinges per door. If the arrangement of the pantries design will allow you to install four, then that’s ideal. These large sections are generally pretty heavy so having four hinges installed can be very beneficial in the long run. read How Many Hinges Should Cabinet Pantry Get
If by chance you need to know how to fix a kitchen or vanity cabinet door that has a crooked handle, I have the answer to your problem. It’s really a rather simple operation. You are going to need a few tools though. Just common ordinary power tools that everyone should have hanging around the house. The drill bit that you are going to need is a three sixteenths thick bit.
Usually situations like this happened because the cabinet installer was careless when he drilled the doors for the handles. Hopefully they are not so bad that a correction can’t be made.
How short are you? This could determine where you should drill the 3/16” hole in the cabinet door for the handle or knob. I’ll never forget the year when I drilled all of the cabinet doors for the new cupboards I had installed in my home and the wife got upset with me. She is about five inches shorter than me. I had placed the handles where we would normally install them for any customer. Well the cupboard doors were all special order raised panel maple. So, there really was no inexpensive way to cure her frustration. We decided that she needed to spend some time in therapy to get over it.
Not really, in all honesty she never again said a single word about it. The height of the people using the kitchen cupboards should be taken into consideration though.
I generally drill the cabinet door for the knob in line with the horizontal line of the raised panel door frame. This usually measures in the neighborhood of about two and a half inches up or down from the outside edge of the door frame. Then I just center the hole in the middle of the frame from left to right.
If the doors are flat and do not have any frame, then I will measure the height of the center of a standard drawer, which is about three to two and seven eights inches, and install the knob that distance down from the top of a base door. From left to right, I will mark the location about an inch and a half in from the outside edge of the cabinet door.
Some people like to measure half the distance of the door frames in both directions and the place the knob there.
There really is not a standard for the cabinet door handles or knobs placements. Just make sure that you install the kitchen or bathroom vanity cabinet door knobs to look balanced and centered correctly.
When you decide to clean out underneath the old sink cabinet you may want to consider painting the area. A word of caution though, if the old sink cabinet bottom has absorbed some sort of liquid and has swelled, you may be in for a challenging task. The reason I say this is because if the substance was lotion that soaked into the flake board, you will have a very tough time getting the paint to adhere. read Painting Old Sink Cabinet Bottoms
