A guide to fitting replacement kitchen doors

Revitalising your kitchen is a fairly straight forward task since kitchen base units are mostly of a standard size. This means one can give their kitchen a new lease of life by simply replacing the cupboard doors and drawer fronts with new ones rather than replacing all the units too. Anyone who's handy with a screwdriver can usually fit replacement kitchen doors so don't feel you need to hire a joiner or handyman unless your DIY skills are likely to bring the house down.

The first thing you need to ensure is the sizes of the doors you're replacing. Draw a sketch or simple diagram of your kitchen units first, then measure each door and drawer, noting the sizes on your diagram. A good joinery tip is to measure twice and cut once, but seeing as you won't be needing a saw for this task, the tip is measure twice and buy once. Once you've got all the sizes, make a note of which side the doors should open as some styles have left and right openings.

Most kitchen units are in standard widths of 400mm, 500mm, 600mm, 800mm and 1000mm, however when buying replacement kitchen doors, they may be sized at 396mm, 496mm and so on, as the reduced sizing allows for the small gap in between each door. Common sense tells you that a 396mm door is designed to fit 400mm or 800mm kitchen base units, but the door widths may be rounded up by certain retailers.

Before ordering, double check that you've got the left and right opening doors correct before choosing which side you need the hinge holes on each of your kitchen doors. As standard, kitchen door hinge holes are 35mm in diameter and drilled 100mm from the top and bottom of the door. Double check your existing kitchen doors comply to these standards before placing your order. Should they not, you may want to consider ordering replacement kitchen doors without the hinge holes pre-drilled and hiring a joiner or handy man to fit the doors for you.

Assuming that everything is 'standard' and you've made sure you've ordered the correct number of left and right opening doors to fit to your existing kitchen base units, all you need to do is fit them. Refer to your initial sketch of your kitchen units and place each door and drawer front where they should go. If the order is short or incorrect, it will be obvious with all the new kitchen doors placed where they're intended to go before you've fully unpacked them. Assuming the order is correct, you can begin replacing each door and drawer front one by one.

The hinges, being an industry standard should fit in to the pre drilled holes with no trouble, and all you'll notice is each door probably isn't hanging straight. On the unit side of the hinge you'll find two adjustment screws, just fiddle with these screws giving them ¼ to ½ a turn each, close the door and observe the affect using the narrow gap between the doors as a guide. You'll suss out what these screws are adjusting after you've lined up a couple of doors, and for all subsequent doors you'll be flying. Failing that, there are many 'how to' videos on you tube which will help.