· by Michael Blair, Nashville's Cabinets
A thin dark line shows up along the top of a wall cabinet where it meets the wall. Or the caulk between the cabinet bottom and the backsplash splits, and the doors on that run start to rub. When the gap is wider at the top than at the bottom, the cabinet is tipping forward off the wall, and that is one of the few cabinet problems that is about safety rather than looks. A loaded wall cabinet is heavy, and when the last fastener gives, it comes down all at once.
How a wall cabinet is held up
Wall cabinets hang on screws driven through rails at the back of the box, usually one along the top and one along the bottom, and into the studs behind. The whole weight of the box, the doors and everything on the shelves hangs off those screws, with a forward pull at the top because the load sits out in front of the wall. Nothing else carries it. The countertop is not under it and the backsplash does not prop it up.
A run of cabinets is also screwed together through the face frames or side panels, so a failing box often hangs partly off its neighbors. That can hide the problem for months. It also means the gap may show on one cabinet while the screws that actually failed belong to the next one over.
Why they pull away
The usual cause is screws that never reached a stud. Studs sit sixteen inches apart and cabinet widths do not line up with them, so an installer in a hurry drives the end screws into drywall with plastic anchors or with nothing at all. Drywall holds for a while, then crumbles around the screw. Drywall screws are the other shortcut; they are hard and brittle, made for gypsum board, and they can snap under a cabinet’s load. Cabinet screws, with a wide flat head and a tougher shank, are made for the job.
In older Nashville houses the wall may be plaster on wood lath, which cracks and lets go when the screws only catch the lath. And sometimes the wall itself is moving. Houses on Middle Tennessee clay settle and shift as the soil dries out in late summer and swells again in the wet months. A gap that opens alongside fresh cracks above a doorway, or doors elsewhere that have started to stick, points past the cabinet to the structure.
- End screws into drywall or anchors instead of studs
- Drywall screws snapped or bent under the weight
- Plaster and lath that crumbled around the fasteners
- Stoneware, cast iron and stacked dinner plates all on one shelf
- Framing or foundation movement, with cracks elsewhere to show it
What to do right away
Empty the cabinet, and the ones on either side of it. Do not push it back to the wall and drive a few longer screws through the old holes; it feels like a repair and usually repeats the same failure, because those holes are in drywall or stripped wood. And do not climb onto the counter underneath it to get a closer look.
If it is visibly tipping, prop it from below with a padded board or a length of lumber wedged between the countertop and the cabinet bottom until it can come down properly. A leaning cabinet with a range hood or an over-the-range microwave fastened under it deserves attention sooner still, since those units are usually bolted through the cabinet above and add their own weight to it.
How it is rehung
The cabinet comes down and the framing behind it is located properly, with a stud finder confirmed by a small test hole where the cabinet will hide it. Damaged drywall is patched. Where the studs do not fall where the cabinet needs them, a hanging ledger is screwed across them first, or blocking is added between them if the wall is open, so there is solid wood behind every screw. The box goes back up level, shimmed where the wall is out, and fastened through its rails with cabinet screws.
The rest of the run gets checked while it is empty, because cabinets hung by the same hand on the same day tend to share the same shortcut. Doors are adjusted afterward, since a box that was leaning has thrown off every gap on it. If the cause was movement in the house, the cabinet can be rehung but the gap may come back, and a foundation contractor or structural engineer should look at that first.