I have a kitchen cabinet pull out rubbish and trash drawer. The drawer box is made out of 1/2 ply with box jointed corners. The applied drawer front is an overlay rail and style with a flat panel. The plywood box is half the height of the cabinet opening. The plywood box is narrow in relation to the cabinet opening width and only contacts 1/2″ of the inner side of each stile. The way it was originally attached was by screws driven from inside the plywood box, diagonally through the corners into the stiles. The screws looked pretty short and the drawer front has fallen off. My plan for a fix is to glue full length triangular corner braces inside the plywood box, drive screws through the corner braces, the box corner into the drawer front stiles. I’ll add more screws that there were before. I’ll also use double sided tape. I bought a 1 inch square dowel at HD….the wood species was not indicated. I cut it length wise to make 2 trangular pieces and it cut so easily that it didn’t feel like a hardwood. Use this or try and find Poplar or another hardwood?
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It's hard to say what it was. A piece of 1" square stock could be oak, birch, poplar, spruce, pine, and a few others.
Hi Jimmiem, I think I understand what you have.. basically a drawer front that came loose from the drawer box because the box was much narrower than the front so the screws had to be driven at steep angles to hit the frame and not the (presumably) thin panel? Your idea is to install beveled strips top to bottom so you can toe screw the front back on using longer screws? I would suggest "thinking outside the box"... sorry.. terrible pun, but that is what I really mean. Can you attach a 1"x1" top to bottom on the outside of the drawer box, then screw through the back of these into the stiles of the drawer front? I think this would be easier and plenty aesthetically pleasing if you use a nice hardwood that matches the drawer box.
The screws were driven at an angle so that they could go into the 3/4" thick stiles. They were drywall screws and seemed short for the job and tore out spots on the back of the stiles. The box joints are kind of loose so I figured glued in full length corner blocking would tighten everything up and provide a good hold spot for the screws. The full length would give a lot of places to find clear solid stile wood. IThe drawer slides are side mount so not much room between the sides of the plywood box and the cabinet face frame. I had thought about using metal angle brackets screwed to the sides of the plywood box and the back of the stiles. I also considered a a rabbeted length of wood screwed to the stiles and hooking over the top of the plywood box.