kitchen cupboard door - screws no longer holding door on because screw holes in door not up to scratch - what can I put in screw holes so that they will hold screws again?

[lavenderdoilly]

Hi. The screws holding the watjamacallit joint on one of our kitchen cupboard doors are no longer staying in place. So the door can come away from the unit when you open the door. Bottom watjamacallit joint is still ok (for now). What can I put in the holes where the screws now longer have purchase so that they. ... have purchase again. Worryingly I am the tech person in the house as you can tell by my use of technical terms. Help. Please.

[howtorebuild]

Glue and woodchip.

[lavenderdoilly]

Ta.

[whois]

I got these discs of material mesh with plaster on them, bat you wet and then could wet and wrap them around the screw and jam it into the wall - worked for a hole in the wall that got too big and couldn't screw in to.

[lavenderdoilly]

Thanks, whois. Do you know a brand or even generic name I could ask for?

[SnuffleGruntSnorter]

My dads simple bodge approach: Cut the heads off matches, coat in glue and hammer as many sticks as you can in there and screw back into the hole. This technique is holding so many thigs together in both our houses!

[SnuffleGruntSnorter]

Obviously cut the math sticks to the right length first

[Ricardian]

Drill the holes out slightly and put in a rawlplug. The technique being described by whois is for holes in walls, not in the wooden carcass of a kitchen unit.

Be careful of the glue+matches technique if what you've got is older and slightly manky MDF/chipboard/fibreboard, because what you can end up doing is creating very uneven forces, particularly when there's a door involved, and causing the carcass of the cabinet to crack. A strip of appropriately sized plugs will cost about 50p, and will work better.

[Obeliskherder]

Thanks for this. We've always done the matches thing but we have a bazillion rawl plugs in the house, and this makes perfect sense.

[lavenderdoilly]

I'd be more likely to use a rawl plug on a wall but not on a kitchen cupboard door. Recognise the point about glue and uneven forces.
The cupboard door is less than an inch thick. It's only a couple of years old. Are there sufficiently shallow rawl plugs?

[Ricardian]

The cupboard door is less than an inch thick.

Ah sorry, I assumed your problem was the screw into the carcass, not the door. For a shallow hole, fill it, drill a small pilot hole and put the screw back in.

[lavenderdoilly]

The place where the screw would go has been worn such that the screw will not hold. Ideally I need some way of putting strength back into the hole where the screw goes.

[PigletJohn]

Use a thicker screw of the same length.

An ordinary decorators filler will not work.

I presume these are the hinges where there is a large round hole in the door that the hinge fits into. This big hole takes the weight. The screws are just to prevent the hinge falling out of the hole. You can use glue in the big hole.

You might possibly find that a different brand of hinge has the holes in a different place. Blum and Hafele are two good brands. You should replace both hinges in the door so they have the same movement. If the hole in the door is very bad, drill it out so that a short piece of round wooden dowel fits tightly, then glue in the dowel, and re-drill your screw holes in that. That is the best way to renew screw holes in old wooden (house-) door frames but will be more fiddly with little kitchen screws.

[lavenderdoilly]

Thanks. That's very helpful. Thanks to all for your suggestions.