Have you just remodeled your kitchen with new cabinets or added some cabinets to a garage or finished basement? Do you have old cabinets that need to have the doors re-adjusted? Are your kitchen cabinet doors not closing correctly? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then it’s important to know how to adjust cabinet hinges. You don’t want to have to call a carpenter for something that you can easily do yourself. There is no reason to add that expense to a project that you’ve already spent money on. Adjusting cabinet hinges is something that’s easy to do once you know what you are doing.
To adjust cabinet hinges, you need three things. The first thing is patience. The second thing is common sense. The third thing is a phillips head screwdriver.
On older style cabinets, where half of the hinge is installed to the face of the cabinet and the other half of the hinge is installed on the inside of the cabinet door, there are no adjustments that can be made. If these doors with this style hinge are not closing properly, the hinges require replacement. It’s important that you purchase the exact same style hinge so that your doors will close correctly after you install your new hinges.
Another common problem with these older style hinges is that the screws come loose and they cannot be tightened. This is generally caused by the screw holes becoming enlarged. To correct this problem, remove the screw and put a small amount of wood glue into the screw hole. You can do this by using a toothpick. Then, fill the hole with broken pieces of toothpick until the hole is filled. Now you have wood to screw the screw back into and that will re secure the hinge.
Most cabinets come with European style hinges which have as many as four screws used for adjustments. The screws at the top and bottom of the hinge are used to move the door up and down. The screw at the back of the hinge is used to move the door away from or towards the face of the cabinet. The screw in the center of the hinge moves the door to the left or right. On the large cabinet that has two doors, it’s important that the space between the two doors is equal at the top of the two doors and at the bottom of the two doors. This is achieved by trial and error. Adjust one door so that it lines up properly with the cabinet face and then close the second door to check the spacing between the two doors. Adjusting the center screw of the hinge will move the doors to the left or right to equalize the space between the two doors. One important thing to remember when doing adjustments on these style hinges is that a slight turn of the screw is all that is required to make an adjustment. Be careful not to turn the screw too far and have it fall out of the hinge. On a smaller cabinet where there is only one door, the spacing between the door and the drawer should be equal, the same as between the two doors. Again you will achieve this by trial and error and by adjusting all four screws to line up with the cabinet face.
