My cabinet door started closing on its own one day. What do?

April 23, 2015 9:34 AM

We have a bunch of the same cabinets. This one door just started being very aggressive, and if we open it too far will spring back to about 25% open. This would be fine if it would stay closed, but it doesn't do that either (there's no latching on this or any of the other cabinets). Is it just a matter of tightening or loosening a screw? Picture under the fold.

This is a picture of the hinge (both of them the same) with screws helpfully labeled for ease of communication

posted by Brainy to Home & Garden (7 answers total)

A, D, E, and F won't help you here.

Adjusting B and C will probably solve your problem. You'll have to do this concert with the other hinge to keep the door plumb and square on the cabinet. Most likely, the door got slammed or run into and that screwed up the alignment. If the door itself has warped, then... that's a bigger problem. I don't think it's likely, but easy to check - just see if it is flat and square.

If it was fine before, then I wouldn't expect a difficult fix.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:09 AM on April 23, 2015

Response by poster: I tried adjusting those screws in various ways but all it did was make it looser. The other doors have a great "snap" that seems to be that they're tight when they're close to being closed and loose when they're open. This one has a tightness when it's all the way open and looser everywhere else. I couldn't build a good model of what was happening when I was adjusting.
posted by Brainy at 10:37 AM on April 23, 2015

The spring inside one of the hinges has probably failed. Assuming screws A, D, E and F are all tight so that the hinges are firmly attached to both door and face frame, there's nothing you can do here but replace the hinges (in which case I would replace both, just to make sure they have the exact same geometry and work well together. The other two screws are position adjustments, but won't help with the problem you're having.
posted by jon1270 at 10:38 AM on April 23, 2015

Yeah, what jon1270 said.

You might try hitting them with some silicone spray, but having read your response, I think they are shot.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:56 AM on April 23, 2015

Sounds as if the spring which would keep the door tightly closed only begins to engage when the door is already partly open; this could be explained if the internal spring has slipped its moorings somehow, either because the housing which holds it in place loosened or because the spring bent or broke.

Look for a small hole in the part that houses the spring which has a stub of the spring sticking out of it on a door which is still OK, but is empty on this door. If you find such a thing, there's a chance you could fix it by taking it apart and putting the stub back in the hole and retightening everything --- if the spring happens not to be broken.
posted by jamjam at 11:39 AM on April 23, 2015

Response by poster: jamjam, I just checked and in both of the hinges there's a column of spring visible and they both look full and in place like the good cabinets do.

Im not questioning that the spring may have failed, but if it totally failed wouldn't it not kick in when all the way opened?
posted by Brainy at 12:03 PM on April 23, 2015

If you want to narrow this down, you could just remove screws E and F on both hinges, and remove the door so you can try the action on each hinge individually.
posted by jon1270 at 12:12 PM on April 23, 2015