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I have a cabinet carcass that I am wanting to fit drawers in, however I'm a little unsure about it and seeking some advice.

My carcass is 710mm tall with 18mm base and spacer, so the height for drawer runners is 710 - (2 x 18) = 674mm.

I have bought some of the Hafele metal drawer system drawers.

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I have 2 x 150mm tall drawers and 2 x 86mm drawers, they didn't come with any instructions.

I also bought some soft close adapters to make these slides close softly, where a tab is screwed onto the bottom of the drawer box and this catches the spring mechanism to provide a controlled close.

enter image description here

These came with some instructions - However it seems to assume that I have bought a specific panel that has pre-drilled holes.

enter image description here.

Now, my kitchen drawers (coincidentally) actually appear to use a similar system to the components I'd bought above! Same height drawers, same type of soft close and everthing! These appear to use the soft close adapters the same way that the instructions suggest - upside-down... I understand that this is to minimise the wasted space fitting them.

The soft-close instructions actually show how far from the top that the adapters should be, however I'm not sure if these are going to accommodate my design for how many drawers I have...

I have 4 drawers, but I would be perfectly happy if I could only use 3. I do however want to make sure that I have 2 of the deeper drawers on the bottom.

Can anybody offer some advice? Should this perhaps have best been asked on the DIY stackexchange?

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    What size drawer fronts do you have? What gap do you want between drawers?
    – Volfram K
    Commented Mar 20, 2022 at 5:38
  • Ah, I'd not really thought that far ahead tbh. My kitchen drawers use 2 deep and 1 shallow drawer with the 2 deep drawers having the same size faces. So.... Ideally if we can have 2 deep and 2 shallow, I'd want them to be of equal size respectively, otherwise if we can't have 2 shallow drawers, then I'd be happy to go for the same as my kitchen. As for drawer face gaps.... maybe 1 to 2 mm?
    – physicsboy
    Commented Mar 20, 2022 at 8:44
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    I hate to say it, but I think you need to simply assemble these things (not in the cabinet — just on the floor) and see how they can be spaced out. The bottom drawer would be as close to the bottom of the cabinet opening as possible, and everything else would flow from that. Btw, 3mm gap between drawer edges is way more forgiving.
    – Aloysius Defenestrate
    Commented Mar 20, 2022 at 13:57
  • I thought that might have to be the case. I've been mocking it up on photoshop this morning and gagueing the best way to have it. I will make sure that I place the bottom one as close to the bottom as I can, and then scale off of that. With regards to the drawer fronts... I will have to just go with the flow on that. I'll take into account what you say bout having 3mm instead and try my best to keep it square!
    – physicsboy
    Commented Mar 20, 2022 at 14:17
  • Not sure if this is where you're at now but don't work from the bottom up. IIRC the trad way to start off spacing (which there are no hard-and-fast rules for with lay-on fronts) is to start at the top and work down; the bottom drawer ends up where it ends up. I think it becomes fairly obvious once you think why you want to pick where the top drawer will be. Anyhoo, that aspect aside you really do have to assemble the drawers and have a look at them real-world in the opening rather than try to do this all theoretically, drawer fitting being notorious for throwing up minor fitting issues.
    – Graphus
    Commented Mar 21, 2022 at 1:14

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