Wall Mounted Microwave Below the Cabinet Won’t Come Loose
Once in twenty seven years I wrestled with a wall mounted microwave from Sears that would not come loose from the cabinet. Frustrated, I wondered where are the screws? What is holding this thing on? There was no evidence of any fasteners anywhere on this over the Kenmore range unit. We looked all inside the cabinet and below the appliance. We even checked out the cabinets on either side and there was nothing to remove.
Here’s the short of the story, you can read the rest if you want too below. Removing this heavy things was a once in a life time experience; here’s how we did it.
- Pull the front grill off
- Take a flashlight and look inside
- Notice that all the way in the back, on both sides of the wall hung microwave there are screws which are securing it to the wall.
- Get a long screw driver about 20” in length and remove the fasteners and the appliance should come off the wall.
Most under the cabinet microwave units have a mounting plate on the wall that the appliance hangs on and bolts that secure it through the bottom of the cabinetry located above. On this Sears microwave, there was no evidence of bolts screws or even brackets anywhere that we could see at first glance.
The challenging part was that this was a kitchen remodel and the customer wanted the microwave to be reinstalled with the new cabinets, so we could not damage it. Otherwise, I would have removed it with a sledge hammer. Very carefully we began to disassemble this headache that was hanging below the cabinet.
We pulled the front plastic grill off and there were no screws which were in plain sight. As we were inspecting the area my worker went to his truck and got out a flashlight.
“There’s the culprit; look at this. All the way in the back of the unit there are screws holding the microwave secure.” I replied, “how are we going to unfasten the microwave, the longest screwdriver that I have is only about 12” long.”
Long story short we had to abandon the project until we could get a screw driver that was about 20” long. As we unscrewed the screws, which were holding the microwave to the wall, the unit began to come loose from everything.
This was the only occurrence in many years of taking down wall mounted microwaves where I had to uninstall an appliance in this manner. So, if you have a situation where the microwave won’t come loose from below the cabinet, perhaps my experience has helped give you a few ideas.