Warped and sticking cabinet doors in Lynn, MA are usually a moisture problem dressed up as a hardware problem, so Custom Cabinets Lynn works out which one you have before anybody touches a hinge. Rehanging and re-squaring a whole run after the house has settled runs $220 to $700. A single door trimmed, refitted and rehung sits inside the $120 to $600 repair line. Our cabinet price guide puts both of those against what refacing or new boxes would cost you instead.
Two questions sort most of these calls before we get there. When did it start, and has it happened before?
A door that binds every August and frees up by November is wood moving with the air in your house. The fix is a sliver off one edge in the right place. A door that went tight once and never came back is almost always the hinge, the screw behind it or the box it hangs on. Taking wood off that door makes your gap permanent.
Getting that backwards is the expensive mistake here, because you cannot put wood back. We would rather spend twenty minutes with a straightedge and a tape than plane a door that was never the problem.
What has actually failed
The door swelled and the gap closed up
Indoor air in a heated Lynn house dries right out in February and turns damp by August. Your wood doors take on moisture from that air and grow. A door 16 inches across grows about a sixteenth of an inch over that swing, which is exactly the gap most shops leave. We set your gaps for the damp end of the year, because a door that is perfect in February will bind in August. A door set right in August only rattles a little in February.
The door has cupped because one face is drier than the other
A cupped door has different air on each side, and your kitchen usually shows you which appliance is to blame. The usual suspects are a dishwasher blowing steam up the front of a door, a range on the far side of a stack, or a radiator under a run. It also happens on doors finished only on the face you can see, since the bare back takes on and gives up moisture faster than the front. We check the back of your door before condemning the front. Where the finish is the cause, we say so rather than selling you a new door.
The hinge moved, and the door never did
A concealed hinge sits in a round hole drilled into the back of the door. In a particleboard door, that hole holds its screws for about as long as nobody leans on the open door. Once the hinge starts to pull, your door drops at the outer corner and catches its neighbor, which looks exactly like a warp from three feet away. A hinge replacement runs $30 to $80 a door, and we do them in pairs, because the second hinge on that door is loosening whether it shows yet or not.
Your boxes are out of square and the doors are fine
Most Lynn kitchens sit in houses built around 1946, and the floor under the base run has usually settled toward one end and taken every gap with it. The tell is a run where the gaps taper the same way all along, rather than one door being wrong on its own. Rehanging and re-squaring the run costs $220 to $700, and it is the fix that holds. Adjusting one door on a run that has tilted just moves the problem one cabinet over.
The drawer is sticking and the door was never the issue
A drawer that catches is either a slide problem or a box problem, and you can tell them apart by pulling the drawer right out. Slides are the cheap end at $7 to $15 a pair in parts and $60 to $180 a drawer fitted. We rebuild a box whose corners have opened or whose bottom has dropped at $180 to $450. Blum soft-close slides are rated for a drawer full of pots, and even so the widest drawer beside your range is usually the one that failed first.
How we find out which one it is
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We ask when it started and whether it came back
We need that answer because a door that binds with the seasons and a door that dropped once take opposite fixes. The calendar separates them faster than any tool does. We would rather have it from you on the phone than guess at it from a photograph.
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We measure your gaps at all four corners
If your door is tight along one whole edge, it has swollen or needs adjusting. If it is tight at one corner and open at the opposite one, it has dropped. We write both numbers down, because they tell us whether we are working on the door or on what it hangs from.
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We check the hinge before we touch the wood
We run all three adjustments on every hinge before reaching for a plane. If the hinge has pulled out of your door we say so. A screw hole packed with filler and a toothpick lasts about a month, and we would rather fit the hinge properly.
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We lay a straightedge across your door in both directions
Your door can cup, bow or twist, and the three look the same to the eye while behaving differently on a hinge. Reading which one you have across the width and the length decides between an adjustment, a trim and a replacement door.
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We tell you what is coming back next year
If your door is going to move again with the seasons, we say that out loud rather than letting you find out in August. Where a door has moved past what an adjustment can hold, we get a replacement made to your opening on a 1 to 2 week lead, against 4 to 12 weeks for a whole custom kitchen.
What decides whether the fix holds
Why people here call us about a sticking door
Nobody wants to pay for new doors when two of the old ones need twenty minutes each. So we start with a tape and a straightedge, not a catalog. Lynn houses run dry as a desert in February and damp by August, and your wood doors move with that every year. We work out whether yours swelled, dropped or cupped, then fix that one thing. Most of it lands inside the $120 to $600 repair line, and we tell you before we start if it will not.
Trimming a painted door in a pre-1978 kitchen changes the method
Most kitchens here were painted before 1978, and that paint may contain lead. Once we disturb more than 6 square feet of it, the state lead-safe rules apply, 454 CMR 22.00. Planing and sanding the edges of a run of original doors gets there in the first ten minutes. So we seal the room, sand wet rather than dry, and finish with a HEPA vacuum and a wet wipe. That belongs on your quote as a line you can see.
Rehanging doors needs no permit, so nobody should charge for one
Adjusting, trimming, rehanging and replacing doors leave your plumbing, wiring and walls alone. The state treats that as an ordinary repair, and nothing gets filed. If somebody has told you a door job needs a permit, they are pricing something else.
The hardware you already have decides how cheap this is
Blum soft-close hinges adjust in three directions, and our hardware supplier in North Reading is about twelve miles from us. Matching what is already on your doors is usually a same-week job. Where your kitchen carries an older hinge with no adjustment at all, we say so early, because converting a run means drilling every door rather than swapping a part. On inset doors, where the door sits inside the frame, every gap shows from across the room. The room for error there is about half what an overlay door allows.
Numbers worth knowing
| Simple cabinet repair | $120 to $600 |
|---|---|
| Rehang and re-square a run | $220 to $700 |
| Hinge replacement | $30 to $80 per door |
| Drawer runner, fitted | $60 to $180 per drawer |
| Soft-close retrofit, whole kitchen | $600 to $1,600 |
| Door and drawer cycle test, ANSI/KCMA A161.1 | 25,000 cycles |
A simple cabinet repair in Lynn runs $120 to $600. A hinge is $30 to $80 per door and a drawer runner $60 to $180 per drawer installed. A water-damaged sink base runs $400 to $1,400. What moves the number is whether the box is still sound underneath.
| What the job is | Typical range | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Simple cabinet repairA loose door, a broken shelf, a cabinet floor that has given way, a face frame joint that has opened. The visit and the fix together. | $120 – $600 | per repair |
| Hinge repair or replacementUsually done in pairs, because when one hinge cup has pulled out of the door the other is already loosening. Cheapest repair on the table. | $30 – $80 | per door, parts and labor |
| Drawer runner hardware, materials onlySide-mount runners at the bottom of that. An undermount soft-close set costs several times this and is a different line. | $7 – $15 | per pair |
| Drawer runner replacement, installedPulling the drawer, taking off the old runner, drilling and setting the new one, then adjusting the front so the reveal matches its neighbors. | $60 – $180 | per drawer |
| Soft-close hinge retrofit across a kitchenEvery door in a normal kitchen changed over at once. Worth doing as a set rather than one at a time, because the doors need re-adjusting either way. | $600 – $1,600 | per kitchen |
| Rehanging and re-squaring a run of doors after settlementWhere nothing is broken and nothing lines up. Common in older houses where the floor has moved under the base cabinets and taken every reveal with it. | $220 – $700 | per run |
| Rebuilding a drawer box in dovetailed hardwoodWhere the old box has split at the corners or the bottom has dropped out. Made to the opening rather than to a standard size, so the front and the reveals stay as they were. | $180 – $450 | per drawer |
| Replacing a water-damaged sink base or dishwasher end panelA particleboard base that has swollen under a slow leak does not dry back. It gets replaced, and the neighboring boxes get checked before anything new goes in. | $400 – $1,400 | per box |
Tell us about the problem
Send photos and one measurement across it, and we will tell you whether you are looking at a repair at $120 to $600, a reface at $5,000 to $13,000, or new boxes.
Questions we get asked
Why do my cabinet doors stick in the summer and not in the winter?
Because the air in your house changes with the seasons. A heated Lynn house dries right out in February and turns damp by August, and your wood doors grow as they take on moisture. They are wider in August. A gap set in the dry months has nowhere left to go by the wet ones.
How much does it cost to fix a sticking cabinet door in Lynn?
$120 to $600 for a single door trimmed, refitted and rehung. Rehanging and re-squaring a whole run where the boxes have moved is $220 to $700. A hinge swap on its own is $30 to $80 a door, and we do them in pairs.
Can a warped cabinet door be fixed, or does it have to be replaced?
About half get fixed. A door cupped less than a sixteenth of an inch usually comes back with a hinge adjustment and a finish on the bare back. A twisted door almost never does. We put a straightedge across yours in both directions before answering that.
Should I just replace all the doors instead?
Doors and drawer fronts across a whole kitchen run $2,200 to $6,600 fitted, or $180 to $330 a door. That is worth it when you want a different kitchen anyway. It is a lot of money to spend on 2 doors that need 20 minutes each.
Will new soft-close hinges stop the doors sticking?
No, and that is worth knowing before you spend $600 to $1,600 on a retrofit. Soft-close changes how a door lands, not how wide it is. Where the doors are binding on the frame, the hinge is the part doing the least.
Who repairs cabinet doors near me in Lynn?
Custom Cabinets Lynn repairs doors, drawers and hardware across Lynn and the North Shore. We measure your gaps at four corners and check the hinge before touching the wood, because you cannot put wood back on once it has come off.
Doors are the cheapest thing in a kitchen to get right and the most visible thing to get wrong. That is why we would rather fix five of yours than talk you into thirty new ones. Where the boxes underneath are sound, that is the whole job.
If your doors are sound but dated rather than broken, our cost guide sets refacing and painting beside what new boxes cost. Refacing against replacing is the shorter answer if that is the decision you are really making, and everything we handle lists the rest.