Tips for Building and Installing Drawers

Building and installing drawers are tasks that have assuredly frustrated many DIY’ers and professionals alike, with the slightest measurement error or slant in the materials used resulting in an imperfect fit and copious amounts of time wasted in efforts to rectify this. I recall a quote stuck on the wall of a timber supplier: “Measure twice, cut once, and then force it to fit…” Precision, planning, and patience is key when it comes to constructing drawers, and even with the greatest attention to detail a few unforeseen elements can cause considerable exasperation!

Although there is no substitute for accuracy and skilled workmanship, learning the hard way has taught us a few handy tips to avoid or, if it comes down to it, fix some of the troubles that arise when building drawers.

Four drawer system under construction. Keep the off-cuts as they might just come in handy to rectify a mishap.

A detailed plan including a drawing of the design

Planning – this cannot be emphasized enough, a solid plan is the basis of success when it comes to building drawers. List the steps you will follow and the materials you will need, and refer to your plan at every step – it is easy to forget a small detail in the building process leading to a lot of avoidable frustration down the line. A detailed drawing is your greatest asset, allowing you to identify possible snags beforehand and to make adjustments accordingly. Visualizing your end product makes the entire construction process much easier.

Measure throughout

Precision at every step of the building process is essential to ensure a quality product. Check the measurements and fit of the different parts throughout, and refer to your design drawing and project plan. Spending a little extra time on each step of the process in order to find and fix small mistakes is far better, and ultimately quicker, than having to disassemble an entire drawer afterwards due to a lack of fit.

Precision is key to building drawers.

Buy extra materials and keep off-cuts

Mistakes happen and planning accordingly can save you considerable amounts of time and reduce frustration. Buy extra materials and keep your off-cuts, so you can remake a damaged panel or replace a stripped screw without wasting time and money on a trip to the hardware store.

Masking tape to reduce splintering when drilling

Masking tape is remarkably useful when drilling into wood, melamine, laminate wood, or any material prone to splintering. Stick a piece of masking tape over the entrance and exit sites of the hole to be drilled to help keep the material from chipping or splintering.

Washers as spacers to rectify imperfect fits

Materials are never a hundred percent level or straight, but the degree of this can vary from microscopic to blaringly noticeable. Even if you were highly precise in your measurements, a seemingly imperceptible slant in your panels may cause a few millimetres’ lack of fit which may result in difficulties installing the sliders and runners of the drawers. If your drawers are slightly too small to fit snugly into the cabinet, you can place washers between the sliders or runners – a very handy and neat looking option if you need to fill in a few millimetres of space.

Number the drawers

A snugly fitting drawer in a multi-drawer cabinet is precisely aligned with its designated space in the cabinet, and it is likely that said drawer will not fit as well into a different drawer’s slot. Numbering the drawers and their designated slots is a great idea to allow easy removal and replacement of the drawers if necessary. Write or stick the numbers to the back of the drawer and the inside backing of the cabinet so that it is not visible when the drawers are in place.

Place washers between runners and or sliders to add a few millimetres if your drawers do not fit snugly. Number the back of drawers and their corresponding slots.

Use vertical slots on runners

Most runners have the option of circular slots or vertically elongated slots through which you can fasten screws. Using the vertical slots allows you to slightly adjust the runners upwards or downwards and better align the drawers. Practice patience at this step as a slight misalignment between drawers can have a large impact on the appearance of your end product.

Use the vertical slots when fastening the runners to allow for slight adjustments in aligning drawers. The above misalignment was corrected in this manner.

Drawers add neat storage space to a piece of furniture and can be a visual feature complimenting the style of a room. Hopefully the above tips can make the challenging process of building and installing drawers somewhat easier!

Drawer system designed to attach underneath a medical examination bed. Constructed for a client.