When we started planning our big kitchen remodel, we knew we didn’t want to change the layout of the kitchen and since the cabinet boxes are still in fairly good shape, we decided to reface the cabinets instead. This meant new doors and drawer fronts instead of replacing all the boxes with new cabinet boxes which saved us thousands on our budget. But we didn’t feel like all our cabinets were serving us well. There was so much space in the cabinets that we couldn’t use so we decided to change many of the cabinets that previously had doors on the bottom and add drawers instead.
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To do this, we had to slightly modify the cabinet box. After removing the cabinet doors, I added a divider to the cabinet opening in the middle of the opening. I used a 1×2 and attached with pocket hole screws on the back side. Drawer cabinets need a divider between the drawers to mount the drawer slide hardware to and for the cabinet drawer front to rest on when closed. I primed and painted everything. We used Sherwin Williams connected gray as the color for the new cabinets.
The next step was ordering new drawer boxes and drawer slide hardware. This part has to be exact because even measuring 1/8″ off will make this very difficult to get these to slide smoothly. First, you need to measure the existing cabinet box depth, width of the opening, and height of the opening. Most standard cabinets will need drawer boxes with a 21″ depth. Drawer slides come in lengths of 12″, 15″, 18″, 21″, 24″ and so on. For our cabinets we ordered 21″ Blum undermount drawer slides from Woodworker Express. You will also need the Left and Right locking mechanism that will get mounted to the bottom of the drawer box and clip into the drawer slides. A few other things you will need are these brackets that get mounted to the back of the cabinet box and the slides will clip into this and these screws.
I also found the exact same slides on Amazon that includes the slides, locking mechanisms, screws and rear mounting brackets and linked them here.
We ordered hardwood dovetail drawer boxes from The Cabinet Door Store. The ones we ordered had a 5/8″ thick side wall which is important to know when measuring and ordering your drawer boxes. They have the option to notch the boxes for Blum undermount slides which is a huge plus and saves a lot of work for you later when you go to install these. When ordering your drawer boxes, here’s the rules we followed if using the Blum undermount drawer slides linked above:
We measured the width of the cabinet opening. Our opening was 24″. Then subtracted 7/16 from that measurement. That left us 23 9/16″ which is the width of the new drawer box we ordered. For depth, we went with an even 21″ because that was the length of the drawer slides we purchased. For the height of the drawer boxes, this doesn’t have to be as precise as the width. We left a 1/2″ clearance on both the top and bottom for an inch total and I wouldn’t suggest going any less than that. Our cabinet height opening was 9 1/2″ so we ordered the drawer box height to be 8 1/2″. As you can see, this is a lot of math and we both love math but our brains were spinning trying to get all these measurements exact! And this is just the drawer boxes, we had to get precise measurements for all 51 cabinet doors and drawers as well! And somehow, we only messed up one measurement total but it was an easy fix!
Here’s a diagram of how we ordered our drawer boxes.
Once the drawer boxes came in, it was time to install the hardware on the cabinet boxes and the bottom of the drawer boxes. The mounting bracket gets mounted to the back of the cabinet box. The slides then slip into the groove on the bracket and then you use screws to attach the front part of the drawer slides to the face frame of the cabinet.
To install the mounting clips to the drawer box, you flip the drawer box over and use screws to attach the clips to the front bottom side of the drawer box.
Once all your hardware is in place, you clip the drawer onto the drawer slides and you are finished!
Here’s some of the final images! These drawer boxes are a dovetail design and are amazing quality. Because they are hardwood, they are built to last! What do you think? Is this something you want to try?!
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