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| If a close look tells you that your doors and drawers are a wreck but the cabinets are in good shape, replacing or upgrading them may be smarter than putting $20,000 into a new set of cabinets. The trick is to find doors and drawer fronts in a matching finish, and to hang the doors. Begin by looking at the hinges: Traditional hinges look like small house door hinges. Hanging doors on them requires some intermediate cabinetmaking skills. If they're European hinges, such as those shown below, hanging doors on them is much easier--as long as the holes are predrilled in the proper places.
The parts on ready-to-assemble cabinets--the ones that come in a box--are usually interchangeable. Hinge holes are uniform from unit to unit. However, replacement doors on custom cabinets, even if factory-built, may not be uniform.
Buy replacement doors and drawer fronts from the company that made the cabinets in the first place. Hang samples to see what problems you may run into.
Complete do-it-yourself cabinet refacing is another option. (The extra work comes in applying self-stick veneer over the face frames.) While it may cost more, you can save time by getting custom-made drawer and door fronts that come with fasteners guaranteed to fit your cabinets. |
 Step 1Remove an old door from the cabinet. European-style hinges have a big, round or square piece, called a hinge cup, that fits in a matching hole in the door. The base that mounts on the cabinet is usually T-shaped and often has sliding parts so that you can move the door up or down to bring it into alignment with other doors. Remove the screws holding the cups in place and take the doors off the cups. |
 Step 2Drawers are usually boxes with decorative false fronts screwed over the front of the box. Remove the screws to remove the false front. If the front isn't removable, you'll have a hard time replacing it. Consider a complete refacing job, in which custom fronts and minor drawer alterations make the upgrade possible. |
 Step 3Put the hinge cup in the hole in the door and screw it in place. Slide the arm of the hinge over the base piece inside the cabinet and tighten the screw. Close the door and see how it sits on the cabinet. If the door juts out from the cabinet or binds when it closes, loosen the screw you just tightened, slide the arm along the base piece, and retighten. Slide the arm away from the back of the cabinet to help fix binding doors; push it toward the back of the cabinet to help fix doors that jut out when closed. |
 Step 4Put a couple of pieces of double-sided tape on the new drawer front to help you position it. Close the drawer and bring the new front up to it. Align the edges so that an equal overhang exists on each side and so that the gap between the drawer bottom and door top is constant; then push the drawer front against the tape. Open the drawer carefully, clamp the false front to the box, as shown to the left, and then screw the new false front in place. |
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