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Warning: Using cheap drawer slides on a big kitchen job backfired on me big time
I took a gamble last fall on some budget undermount slides for a 20-drawer kitchen remodel in Boulder. They were half the price of the Blum stuff I usually use, and the finish looked okay in the box. By week three, three drawers were already sagging and one wouldn't close right at all. I thought I was being clever saving about $200, but I ended up ripping all 20 out and starting over with the good ones. The extra labor cost me way more than I saved, and the client was not happy about the delay. Has anyone else tried cutting costs on slides and regretted it, or did I just pick a bad batch?
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aaron8961mo ago
Wow, that's a rough lesson. I have to wonder if the issue wasn't just the slide quality, but maybe the box build itself. Cheap slides often have tighter tolerances, so if your drawer boxes were even a little off square or the cabinet openings weren't perfectly level, those budget slides just can't compensate the way good ones can. I've seen guys blame slides when it was really their own install work that was the problem, especially on a big job where small errors add up. Not saying you did anything wrong, just that cheap hardware has zero forgiveness. The Blum stuff has that little bit of adjustment room that saves you on a job where things aren't perfect. So maybe it wasn't a bad batch, just a bad match for how the job was built.
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