I think they typically use a black light to confirm that, don’t they? Rodent urine should glow. If you have one, shine it on that spot and see if it fluoresces.
I’m more interested as to why you have a cottered crank from a bicycle on your counter. It looks like it has been cusomized into a tool with a little blacksmith work. What’s it do?
With no offense intended (because the fault is on the cabinet maker), that’s one of the flimsiest looking designs I’ve seen. In most cases, the face is just a plate attached to the cabinet itself.
As for fixing it, it looks like it was just stapled through the sides. I’d pull the staples and clean up the bits where the face ripped off. Maybe try filling in those parts of the face plate with some wood fill or bondo. Then you can run some glue along the cabinet and glue the face back on. Maybe run some L-brackets and nails/screws into it, too, if it still feels flimsy.
Thank you for the advice. The cabinets are supposedly only 3 years old (came with the house). The particle board on the front side seems too damaged. Would a regular piece of wood work?
Looking at the picture, a regular piece of wood should work as long as the thickness is the same. Otherwise the front will sit a bit proud if thicker, or there will be a gap if thinner. Though you could trim the dado back on the sides if it’s thicker. Edit: and make sure to measure size before trying to take it off. Just in case it breaks more.
It looks like that particle board is nailed to the face. Hopefully it isn’t glued as well, otherwise it’ll be a beast to get off. Those screws are just for the handle and likely have no structural qualities.
Regardless of what you do to fix the drawer, consider that its the weight of what you’ve got in the drawer that caused the failure. Consider either reinforcing the underside, and or waxing or lubing whatever the roller or mounting hardware is. The heavy weight causing drag is ultimately why this failed (along with it just being cheap as shit particle board).
When I’ve had this issue in the past, I’ve gone ahead and replaced and reinforced the whole thing with 1/4th inch plywood. You can run two dados up the face board and then run the plywood into those, then pin nail and glue.
I suspect that what caused the failure is a lack of soft close. When closing a drawer, if the slide is smooth and doesn’t have a stop, then the drawer front gets a huge impulse when it collides with the cabinet body. Since the entire kitchen likely has the same craptastic quality, the first step is to instruct everyone to close the drawers as gently as possible. Then consider retrofitting soft close mechanisms to the drawers. And maybe even start saving up to replace the cabinets because more failures are likely.
soft close would hurt but when mine failed, it was the weight of the crap warping the structure of the drawer that stressed the joins ultimately leading to failure. Effectively bowing it out from the inside.
Well, we had the bright idea of attaching 3m hooks to the inside of the drawer upside down, and hanging grocery bags from the outside to act as trash bags to swipe vegetable peels off the countertop (if that makes any sense). Coincidentally, we’ve decided not to do that anymore.
Yup you should be seeing small pill shaped droppings. Mice leave them everywhere (if you have them).
A cheap solution is to ask a neighbor with cats for some leftover litter (urine litter not cat poop). Fill up a small disposable tray or bowl with the urine soaked litter and put it up in your attic for a few days. I’ve had mice clear out the day of and never return. Also consider just getting a cat for long term pest control.
Fun fact, cats aren’t actually very effective at killing all the rodents. They’ve done studies and basically the cats just make them really skiddish and they hide so you never see them. They kill one here or there but the real benefit is getting them out of sight.
You never met my cat. She was the Terror of Rodents. Like Roman conquerers of old, she used to line up decapitated rats on the welcome mat as her Triumph. Stepping on a whole family of five dead rats while leaving for work is a good start to the day.
Pull the drawer completely out so it is free from the cabinet and empty it. Cut/pull the exposed staples. Clean it up. Dry fit it so it goes back together well and seats as flush as it used to. Titebond wood glue all connecting surfaces, both sides. Fit the drawer front back on the drawer body and set it either front face down on a table with a book or three on the top, or drawer back side down with books/weight on the top/drawer face. Let glue cure for 24 hours. That should honestly be enough unless it gets a lot of abuse. If that’s the case, some wood corner/shoe moulding glued into the inside left and right corners afterward should keep it intact. Wood glue is strong AF. Stronger than the wood that drawer is made from.
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