Kitchen Cabinet Drawers - Metabox Installation

So what is the most intimidating part of building your own kitchen cabinets? 

Apart from the huge scope of the entire project, I'd have to say building and installing easy to use drawers can seem very intimidating.  Kitchen drawers get used dozens of times a day, so you want drawers that are both easy to use and will hold up over years of use.

For the Momplex white kitchen, we decided to use a drawer side/slide combo system, call Metabox drawers by Blum.  They were pretty much the same price as a standard drawer slide set, but you get the drawer SIDES out of the deal too ...

These are the exact slides we ended up using - $7.45 over at Amazon!

NOTE: You'll want to measure your openings first and the depth of your drawers to figure exactly what slides you will need - Blum has tons of information here.

All you have to do is add the bottom, back - the sides and slides are all integrated in one easy to install but highly durable system.

Here's how we built our drawers:

First, we measured the width and depth of the openings for the drawers.  Then we followed the instructions provided with the slides to cut the bottom out of 1/2" hardwood plywood.  You can use different materials too (for example 3/4" thick bottom).  There's a handy little chart with the instructions that shows you exactly what size per slides, openings, and material thickness in the instructions.

The sides get screwed down to the drawer bottom.  There's also a couple of little holes you have to drill for tabs in the bottom too.

Pretty simple, right?  We thought so too!

Next, we cut the back per instructions, and fit it on the back,

And screwed the metal drawer sides to the back.

We also tacked a few staples through the bottom into the back ... just because we have overbuilding issues.

And that's one drawer done! 

Pretty simple!

Now on to the cabinet members of the drawer slides:

Since we have two kitchen to build, we went ahead and invested $20 for the drawer slide installation gun -

And since the cabinets we built have face frames, we also ordered the rear mount sockets for the drawer slides to match.  You'll see why I'm madly in love with these guys in a second.  Madly, I tell you!

The sockets fit on the ends of the drawer slides - there's room for adjustment ...

And you just place your drawer slide with socket where you want it vertically on the face frame opening,

And screw the socket to the back of the cabinet.  No shimming required!!! 

Then the front of the drawer slide is attached to the actual face frame, and that's it!  Time to test the drawer!

Will it work???  

How can it?  That was just WAY too easy!

No way!!! 

It slides in perfectly!!!

And since this drawer slide system is attached only to the face frame and the back of the cabinet (yep, no sides required!) even adding a drawer to the blind corner was just as easy.

As long as we got the bottom plywood cut to fit the face frame opening width just right, the only fine tuning adjustments we had to make on a few of the cabinets was the location of the rear mount sockets - which are adjustable by simply loosening the screws, and then reposition the rear mount sockets to the left or right until the drawer slides perfectly smooth.

Once the drawer faces were painted and ready to go, the Metabox system requires a front fixing bracket that attaches to the back of the drawer faces (see instructions for exact placement).

Those guys just get screwed to the backs of the drawer faces,

And the drawer face just clips on to the drawer sides!

You can adjust the drawer face quite a bit to get a perfect placement of the drawer face, then just tighten with a screw driver,

And it's a finished product!

Hopefully Mom doesn't read this post ... because she's been marveling at how nice the drawers are ... and assuming we worked super hard to install them.  

Then the truth comes out.

It really wasn't that hard.  We really aren't that awesome.  We don't deserve the cookies.  

Why do I almost feel like we cheated on these?

Happy Building!

XO Ana

PS - This post is not sponsored by Blum Metabox or anything like that.  I'm sure they are totally weirded out by the crazy Knockoffwood lady professing her love for their drawer slides.