The BEST Drawer Slide Method! Ana White's Secret Trick!

I've installed a lot of drawer slides and over the last 10 years I developed a unique solution that takes all of the frustration the figuring the special tools out of the equation it makes installing a drawer like this using full extension drawer slides perfect on the very first try so for this video we're meanness installed the drawer is underneath our induction cooktop and originally I thought the induction cooktop would need a lot more clearance but after we installed it and read the directions there's definitely a lot of room for a drawer that still meets code so I'm going to go ahead and add a drawer here what I did to prep this space is I removed the false store that was in here and I put a little bit extra support behind this 1 by 2 because it is spanning quite a distance I just threw it 2 by 2 in there for extra support um so what we're looking at here is a face frame cabinet which means that there's a carcass and then there's this space frame trim on the front what we need to do is where the drawer slides gonna go needs to be brought in so it's flush with the base frame so the first thing going to do is take these pieces of 3/4 inch plywood that I cut and they don't have to be exactly everything is just a spacer and bring that in here and nail up and this is just going to bring where I'm going to mount the drawer slides flush the inside of the face frame make sure your cabinet carcass is square and also if you're using 1 by 12 to the side or solid wood look out for any cupping or anything that can pinch that drawers it's trying to travel in now I don't need to figure out where I want the drawer slide mounted I like to mount the drawer slides about where the handle is so you're pulling right where it slides but you have a lot of variation in your situation could be different so just kind of figure out where you want the center of the drawer slide to be in make a mark and you're going to want to make those marks on both sides of the cabinet where you're going to install the drawers like and then take a level we're gonna draw a line so this is the full extension drawer slide I'm going to be used and you can buy these at most home improvement stores or about half price or even cheaper online if you buy them in in quantity and one thing I want you to notice is we have a cabinet member which is this larger piece and it separates from the drawer member so there's two pieces the cabinet member is a larger and the drawer member is the smaller if you notice the way that this drawer is going to travel all of the screw holes are in line so just think about that as you're installing it we're not trying to figure out where the top of the slide is the bottom of the slide is we're just trying to remember that the center of these drawer slides are all on the same line so that line that I drew here what I'm gonna do is I'm not gonna put it like that where the lines on top I'm gonna put it where the lines are right in the middle two screw holes and I'll screw that on so the most important thing here is not holding this exactly right when you screw it in it is starting your screw right in the center of that line as long as you start your screw in that line you're gonna be good [Music] okay so the cabinet members are installed so now I'm going to start working on the drawer this is a drawer member and you want to cut your drawer side to the same length as your door member so this is a fourteen inch drawer slide so I cut the drawers side to fourteen inches now it's gonna be a little bit shy because these usually run like 13 and 7/8 it's like a little bit smaller than the door so I just cut it whatever the package says like 22 inch drawers like cut your side of 22 inches long okay now we're gonna figure out where we want to mount this on the drawer site okay so I'm just gonna take the drawer side that I cut and I'm just gonna kind of figure out where do I want that to be and remember there's no bottom on it so I'm leaving room for a bottom I want this one kind of low just to give me clearance for that induction top so that looks about right and I'm just gonna mark that and there's some play there but now I'm just gonna figure out where I made that mark and it looks like it's right in the center of this 1 by 4 so I'm gonna say inch in three-quarter inches reporter use a straight edge and draw a line [Music] and this ends up being the front of the drawer this is what's inserted into the drawer slide so we want to place this so the line is in the holes so what I recommend here is if you can use start this screw in the holes that have the up-and-down adjustment because that way you'll have the ability to move the drawer slide up or down slightly if you need to you can see this is mounted with the holes the line going right through the center of the holes okay so I'm gonna do now is put this in the drawer slide [Music] okay so I got the two drawer sides installed now notice there's a little bit of flexibility there so what you want to do is make sure they're sliding good everything's happy make sure they're in there and then take it inside the measurement so whatever that is so I got thirty three and a half and to take that same measurement in the back make sure it matches if it doesn't match you want to take the smaller of the two measurements so let's say I had thirty three and five eighths and thirty three and a half I'm gonna go with thirty three and a half go downstairs and cut me two one by fours that will be the drawer front in the back pocket pull them come up and attach them to see what that works good actually install it in place I'm going to pull it out and do it just because I think that might be easier in this situation and obviously you could build your drawer box you know the old-fashioned way where you just built you just take the measurements figure out everything I like this method because it takes any of the guesswork out or if you have any variances so if for example your drawer material is 5/8 of an inch thick instead of three-quarters of interesting you don't have to do all that math or try to figure it out or if you have like an off-brand or a slide that needs more or less clearance you know all the guesswork is takeout okay so the most important thing with the drawer sides is to make sure that your cabinet members of the drawer sides are orientated so that the tab is on the front on both sides and just goes up you could screw these together there's nothing wrong with that I have a pocket hole jig it's easy okay so there is my drawer box I'm going to test it one more time before I put bot so that's absolutely perfect on the very first try it anybody has ever tried installing these drawer slides it's like a guessing game should I hold it in an eighth or quarter more or less this is perfect and you don't even have to do any math [Music] you know the drawer it it can end up being like a parallelogram wants out of square I know this plywood is square so what I did first is I nailed that edge on square and now as I'm working my way down here and squaring out the George that plywood edge and that way I know my drawers would be slur [Music] there's the drawer all done I'll probably add some dividers in there just because it's quite a large drawer but I do want to talk about something real quick it is I just use quarter inch plywood on the bottom of this drawer and the reason I felt like I can get away with that is this band is only about 12 inches here but if you have a really big drawer with a really big span you know the drawer could start to sag in the middle or the weight of the drawer could fall out on you so you may want to use like 3/8 inch plywood on the bottom of your door so I'm gonna go ahead and put the face on it and we'll be done okay so think about the drawer face is we want to attach it from the back with the screws but we have to light it up first so what I do is I'll get it exactly where I want I will throw a couple nails in avoid anywhere that you're gonna plan on putting hardware so you don't have to drill a handle through a nail no what I'm gonna do is open this up and it's barely on there I'll throw a couple screws in to further secure [Music] I'm just going to fill those little nail holes up with some wit filler touching up with some paint with the handles on and I'm done so that was the easiest drawer that I've ever installed and probably one of the smoothest I've ever installed I wish I'd known all these tips and tricks over the years and all the projects that I've done so now that I've taken out the guesswork and share it all my little secrets and tips it's going to be a breeze for you to take drawer slides and make your home awesome [Music] so I hope this doors like video is helpful to you if you have any tips that you've learned along the way leave them in the comments we'd love to hear any little tricks that you have that could even improve how I install to our slides if you're looking for any plans that use drawer slides head on over to my website I'll leave a link in the description we have thousands of plans a lot of them used our slides and we appreciate you guys watching please take a second to subscribe and like this video and we shall see ya next Monday [Music] [Music]

Channel: Ana White

Views: 759,524

Rating: 4.9379911 out of 5

Keywords: anawhite, ana white, woodworking, build, wood, plans, project, howto, how to, how-to, diy, doityourself, do it yourself, do-it-yourself, easy, simple, 2x4, free plans, make, tutorial, drawer slides, how to install drawer slides, full extension drawers, add a drawer, drawers, cabinet making, building cabinets, drawer installation, drawer glides, drawer slide installation

Id: AlvlrPxXGUw

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2020