0
157963
When arranging a room, you should not only think about the proper furnishings and stylish decoration, but also choose comfortable furniture. When choosing furniture elements, especially cabinets, you should pay special attention to door hinges. It is important that the structures can be opened and closed with ease. When assembling cabinets, you should carefully inspect all the component elements, and it is better to independently adjust the hinges to the required level. A process such as adjusting hinges on cabinet doors is not at all complicated; the main thing is that you need to carefully study all its features.
What you need to adjust furniture hinges
Of course, the appearance and position of the doors on a kitchen or wardrobe depends entirely on the skill of the assembler. If no gross mistakes were made when installing the hinges on the door and the inner wall, then it is quite possible to adjust the hinges on the kitchen cabinet doors with your own hands without outside help.
Hinge adjustment points diagram
In order to correctly adjust the position of the awnings, you only need three tools:
- Construction level with bubble chamber;
- Wooden school ruler;
- Crosshead screwdriver.
A caliper may come in handy if you suddenly need to adjust four hinges on a wardrobe at once. Sometimes it will be useful to get a flashlight or a portable lamp if we are talking about setting up awnings on a cabinet in an inconvenient or poorly lit area of the furniture wall. The process takes 5-10 minutes, depending on the experience and condition of the furniture facade.
For your information! For those who have to hang doors or adjust hinges with their own hands for the first time, one nuance should be noted. The internal round grooves or “cups” into which the hinge bodies, including those with a closer, are inserted, are cut with a milling cutter according to a template in a workshop or factory during the manufacture of the cabinet. You can only insert a loop using a template
They are probably made with maximum positioning accuracy on the cabinet door, so you cannot even try to adjust the position of the doors on the cabinet by re-milling the “cups”.
Where to begin
- Assess the correct installation of furniture. If it is skewed (uneven floors, differences in the height of its legs), then adjusting the cabinet doors may not help. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate this shortcoming. Controlling the position of furniture is best done using a building level or plumb line; It is quite difficult to visually determine deviations from the vertical, especially minor ones.
- Inspect the awnings. This is necessary, firstly, to determine their type (the methodology for further work largely depends on this), and secondly, their condition. If the fasteners are loosened, adjustment will not be necessary; You just need to tighten the fasteners more tightly.
- Determine the type of regulation. It depends on how curved the cabinet facade is, where there are large and small gaps between its doors, in which area the fabric catches, and so on. Then it will become clear how exactly it should be adjusted: in height, depth or width.
How to adjust furniture hinges
To properly set up the operation of the canopy, you first need to check the position of the cabinet itself. Doors on the facade will help sag under their own weight or due to skew of the body. To do this, we check the position of the box with a level and level it either by altering the suspension on the wall, or by trying to adjust the height of the legs.
Any mortise hinge has at least three position adjustment screws. In general, the system allows you to adjust the position of the door, its displacement by 2-4 mm vertically, horizontally and in depth. Since there are usually two loops, the angular deviation can also be corrected. A more detailed description of the screws for adjusting furniture hinges is given in the video:
But you can also use the diagram below.
How to adjust furniture hinges vertically
In all training manuals and manuals, it is usually recommended to begin adjusting the door position by eliminating the most obvious problems with the hinges. If the screws are not screwed deep enough or are loosened at both fastening points, then one half of the facade will simply drop a few millimeters lower relative to the other.
Advice! First of all, you need to check the condition of the screws themselves. If the cabinet is assembled from chipboard of low quality, then it happens that the fasteners are pulled out of the particle board.
In this case, you will need to unscrew the screws, place a piece of a match or toothpick in the hole and tighten the fasteners.
If the fastening is in order, you can adjust the height of the sash by unscrewing the screw 1-2 turns. Next, we will raise the cabinet door level with the other half, fix it and at the same time raise the “butterfly” hinge to the same height. All that remains is to tighten the fasteners with a screwdriver, use a ruler and a level to check the accuracy of the installation.
How to adjust furniture hinges horizontally
Since when opening a cabinet a person usually grabs the corner of the door with his hand, the main part of the load falls on the nearest hinge. As a result, the door may warp, the upper parts of the two doors will collide head-on, and a huge wedge-shaped gap will form between the doors below.
In this case, you have to adjust the horizontal displacement along the front on one of the hinges, usually the top one. To level the position, you will need to unscrew the adjusting screw, which is located first from the end, as in the diagram.
Before adjusting, you need to loosen the screw, align the door and only then tighten the fastening point
If a cabinet with a skewed door has been in use for a long period of time, then you will probably have to adjust the lower canopy. Using a school wooden ruler, it is convenient to control the size of the gap between the edges of the sashes, so as not to adjust, as they say, “by eye.”
You can configure cabinet doors with four hinges in the same way. Initially, you need to adjust the gap on the top and bottom hinges, then use the screws to level the gap in the middle of the sash. One of the options for adjusting the horizontal reach is shown in the video:
How to properly adjust furniture hinges in depth
Front or depth adjustment makes it possible to adjust the size of the gap between the ends of the side walls of the cabinet and the ends of the door in the open position.
Frontal adjustment is the most important; the durability of the hinge depends on the accuracy of the gap setting.
If the doors do not open completely to an angle of 90°, then most likely there is no working gap at all. To fix the problem, you need to adjust the specified distance at 0.6-3.4 mm. Again, it is very convenient to use a ruler as a gauge.
Adjusting the gap is easy:
- We turn out the screw farthest from the facade;
- Place a ruler on the end of the wall and fix it with your hand;
- Next, you need to adjust the protrusion of the screw with a screwdriver so that the cabinet door leaf opens fully.
It is also not recommended to make the gap too large; in this case, you will have to additionally adjust the position of the horizontal movement with a nearby screw.
How to adjust sliding wardrobe doors with rail motion
In some samples of sliding wardrobes, the mechanism for debugging doors is slightly different. For example, “STERKH” suggests that in order to adjust the movement of the door leaf, find a bracket that is located on the bolt locking device. The lock, in turn, is located on the sealing frame approximately in the middle of the wardrobe.
A rail sliding mechanism is provided in older models. It is not as reliable as a roller, but it can still be used faithfully for several years in a row. To adjust the movement of the doors of such a product, select the height of the rail; it can be raised or lowered.
According to furniture makers, the condition of the sliding mechanism is determined by the degree of its wear. The longer the wardrobe's lifespan, the more often it will have to be serviced and repaired. If the furniture is 5 years old or more, be prepared to replace the rollers every six months. The situation with rails is more complicated - they have not been produced for a long time, and if you find them on sale, they are most likely of low used quality.
In order for the doors to move smoothly on the rollers, without delays, it is advisable to periodically distribute a special lubricant or machine oil on the parts. Moreover, this must be done before the mechanism fails.
Video instructions on how to independently adjust the position of doors in a wardrobe are presented below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmF8Zvs-7DE.
How to care for furniture hinges
Of all the listed gaps, the frontal size is considered the most important. If you do not control its size, then, in addition to a poorly opening door, more serious shortcomings may await:
- Premature wear of hinge parts; due to increased force, the rotary axes wear out in literally a year or two, even on expensive branded products;
- On wardrobes, doors become deformed and take on a curved or barrel-shaped shape.
By themselves, metal hinges for kitchen furniture are considered quite reliable, provided that the doors are adjusted correctly. If you adjust and lubricate the rotation axes once a year, the resource will last for at least 10-15 years. The only “enemy” of furniture canopies is a gas stove. When gas burns, a certain amount of very viscous tar-like substances is formed, which are easily deposited on metal surfaces. Therefore, the hinges in a cabinet located close to the hob often get stuck, and, as a result, the doors open with increased force.
Installation and adjustment of fasteners
Sometimes situations occur when the owner, through careless actions, damages the loop, causing it to leave its place or move. In this case, he must correct everything and adjust the fastening.
The most common type of malfunction is associated with a phenomenon in which the hinges “pull” the door. It is worth saying that this can happen with piano hinges. Here it is important to install the hinge very accurately , doing everything without haste.
To install the fittings, you should prepare a number of tools:
- accessories that need to be installed;
- drill bit with end tip;
- mounting plate;
- fasteners.
Adjustment for horizontal divergence of furniture doors
The main task here is to install the door in such a way that there is a gap on the fastening side, and when closing the door, the reverse side extends beyond the boundaries of the cabinet walls. If the furniture has two doors, they should cling to each other.
The adjustment process itself comes down to manipulating a special adjustment screw, which is found on furniture hinges. Finding it is quite simple: its usual location is the hinge arm, located closest to the door, in contrast to the mounting screws and the additional adjustment screw. If this screw is screwed even tighter, this will lead to an increase in the gap between the end of the door and the cabinet wall. By doing the opposite, that is, by loosening the screw, we reduce the distance between the designated elements.
Adjusting the depth of the cabinet door
While using a cabinet or other furniture, the owner may notice that its door, when closed, goes beyond the boundaries or, conversely, is too recessed into the cabinet. In this case, the adjustment procedure will be similar to that used in the previous case. To do this, you need to again find the adjusting screw on the hinge arm, remembering that it should be closest to the cabinet wall.
The purpose of this screw is not only to adjust, but also to secure the door. Thus, if you unscrew it slightly, it will be possible to move the door back and forth in relation to the walls. To make the adjustment, you need to determine the appropriate position of the door, move it to it, and then tighten the adjusting screw until it stops.
Remember that it is not only important what design of fittings you buy for your furniture. It is also important that its installation is carried out by a qualified installer. In this matter, every little detail is important , which can affect the service life of the entire product.
This type of fittings, such as hinges, plays an important role in influencing the service life of furniture. Therefore, you should approach its choice just as responsibly as choosing a cabinet or cabinet. The design features should , because if there is a discrepancy between the fittings and the product itself into which it will be installed, then this part will not last long.
Also, at the selection stage, you should inquire about the maintenance features of a specific type of furniture hinge. This is important due to the fact that in the absence of knowledge about how to properly adjust the fittings, the owner will not be able to use the furniture with all convenience. And in this case, he risks bringing closer the moment when he will need to look for new loops to replace those that will soon fail.
