The Tiny Tweak That Can Fix Your Kitchen Cabinets’ Most Annoying Feature
When thinking about things you love (or hate!) about your kitchen, you probably focus mostly on the things you can see. Maybe you’re wild about the cabinet paint color, but you hate the layout; maybe you hate the countertops, but you adore the style of the backsplash. But kitchens, like any room in your home, aren’t just about looks. The way your kitchen sounds can be a huge factor in how much you like it, too — especially when that sound is the slam of cabinet doors.
Great news: You can completely fix that horrible noise for under $5 and only a few minutes of work by adding fresh cabinet bumpers to the insides of your cabinet doors.
Many cabinets come outfitted with little bumpers on the inside corners of the doors, but if yours don’t have them — or if they’ve worn down over time — then the noise your cabinet door makes when it hits the cabinet frame can be jarring. In my own kitchen, which we guess is at least 10 years old (and probably more), little foam cushions on the cabinet doors were only about 50% present. The ones that hadn’t worn off or fallen off over time had been so squished down that they barely did anything anymore.
The result was that even the most gentle of touches to the cabinet doors sounded like slams. I could hear my husband closing cabinets all the way from our bedroom, and he says he could hear me all the way from his basement office. It was pretty annoying!
The fancy solution to this problem is soft-close cabinet hinges. This little luxury slows the closing of cabinet doors to make the close silent (and so smooth). The cheap, renter-friendly solution to this problem, though? Fresh cabinet bumpers, which you can get for under $5 at any hardware store.
Applying the bumpers is easy. Here’s how.
Check for existing cushions or bumpers on the insides of your cabinet doors. If present, use a utility knife to gently pry them off.
Peel a bumper off its sheet. Apply to the top innermost corner of your cabinet door and the bottom innermost corner.
Repeat for the rest of your cabinet doors. That’s it!
The bumpers provide a little barrier between cabinet doors and frames, so you won’t have any more wood-on-wood clanking. And for a tiny project that costs under $5 to pull off, you’d be surprised at how effective it is in silencing one of the most annoying noises at home.
