How to Fix Wooden Drawer Slides? 6 Pro Tips

Everything surrounding us decays over time. This includes your Wooden drawers too. Sometimes we want to fix the defective part and use that thing again. As a part of this, have you ever thought, about how to fix wooden drawer slides?

Fixing your Wooden drawer slides is just a combination of a few steps. Want to upgrade with a ball-bearing metal runner? It would be a great choice, go ahead.

First, remove the drawer & slides, install plates and attach by the stick and removing sticks afterward, install the runners and set back drawer into the cabinet, finally make some adjustments like additional screws and its finished.

No matter whether you’ve prior knowledge or not, let’s finish the job together.

Contents show

Tools to Fix Wooden Drawer Slides

Fixing something by yourself just takes a little bit more time because you’re not professional. To fix the wooden drawer we’ll need some tools alongside new metal plates. They’re:

How to fix a wooden drawer slide with metal plate

A Hammer.
½ inch screws.
Drill or driver.
Diagonal Pliers.
A bottom-mount drawer kit.

Speaking of the bottom mount drawer runner kit, there’s a nice tutorial on how to install bottom mount drawer slides. Hope you’ll find it helpful.

How to Fix Wooden Drawer Slides?

As I said earlier fixing is a very simple process. Now you need to follow the steps below accordingly. They are:

Drawer and Slide Removal

First, remove the drawer and tap the wooden slides with a hammer. Here you may find the nails resisting while losing the slides. In that case, just insert your screwdriver from the back and pull them off. Pull off the remaining nails with pliers.

Plate Installation

You’ll find two runner packages named CL and CR. Now remove a CL marked runner and you’ll find a stationary plate at the front and a sliding horizontal at the back in the cabinet. Place the stationary on the left-front side flushing with the corner.

Again, place the horizontal plate at the face frame and attach both plates with screws using a drill or screwdriver. This way fix the CR marked runner too.

Plate Attachment

In this phase, slide the plates to connect with horizontal sticks where the old runners were attached. Now screw the slides with the stick and maintain a parallel with the old runners. You can put a few screws on the oval-shaped holes of the plates.

Stick Removal

Now remove sticks from both sides of the drawer one by one. For that, grab with a plier to pull and twist until it comes apart. Repeat the process on both sides of the drawer.

Runner Installation

You’ll find two marks DL & DR on both runners of the drawer. Turning the drawer’s left side up, place the DL-marked runner on the left bottom edge of the drawer. The runner must fit the bottom edge of the drawer with the wheels at the drawer’s back.

Now place two screws gradually on the oval-shaped holes both in the front and the back. After that, repeat them for the right side too.

Finishing

Now hold the drawer at a 30° angle, fit the wheels on the runners and slide it into the cabinet. If it gets stuck, check the alignment of the wheels and the plates at the front of the cabinet. If they mismatch then loosen the screws, align and tighten them and finally try again.

In case you want to know about fixing ball bearing drawer-slides we have a tutorial.

How Do You Fix a Wooden Drawer Track?

To fix them, remove the drawer along with the items from the cabinet first. Use some soap on slides, re-align and tighten the screws by applying glue. Afterward, clean the tracks, remove damages and reinstall the drawer.

We have a tutorial on how to fix dresser drawers, which you may find helpful. Again here’s a video tutorial too

How Do You Fix a Drawer Slide That Sticks?

Very easy and regular stuff. First, remove the drawer and pull the end when it sticks. Now slide the drawer back in, if it goes smoothly then ok. If not then look at the glides whether they’re in the right shape, and use pliers to reshape them.

Moreover make sure the glides are parallelly installed, if not then loosen them and reinstall them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can You Replace Wood Drawer Slides with Metal?

If you’ve worn-out wooden slides or want a smoother experience then, you can replace them with ball-bearing metal runners. They’re screwed in matching pairs to the drawer and cabinets.

Wrapping Up

So far we did try to learn a lesson on how to fix wooden drawer slides. Here we came to know about some helping tools, necessary steps, and some tips with cautions.

We all know that most of the wooden drawer issues are from vintage furniture. These things are sometimes tough to fix. This means you may need to go through a trial-and-error process but you’ll succeed eventually. Wish you the best.