LESLIE: Marge in New Jersey is on the line with a broken kitchen cabinet carousel. How can we help you today?
MARGE: I have a carousel in the kitchen for the kitchen cabinets. And the shelf – the top one is dropped a lot. And I can’t figure out how to go about to secure it or – how in the world do you repair something like that?
TOM: So is this sort of like what we would call a Lazy Susan? Like sits inside of a cabinet and spins around?
MARGE: Yes. And holds the pots and pans.
TOM: They take a lot of wear and tear don’t they, Marge, I mean over all those years?
MARGE: Sure. And does it have to be replaced or can it be repaired?
TOM: Well, it depends. The first thing you need to do is clean that cabinet out and take the existing broken kitchen cabinet carousel apart.
Now, if the mechanism itself – like the ball bearings have fallen apart – there’s a bracket between the carousel and the bottom of the cabinet that has two plates on them and they spin on ball bearings. If that access has broken down – which it could over many years – that has to be replaced. And the thing is that those parts are all available, especially for those old cabinets. You can usually find them online if you research them. And essentially, what has to happen here is you’ve got to take that whole broken kitchen cabinet carousel apart and then rebuild it.
Now, this might be a job for a carpenter or a cabinet maker or somebody that’s just handy enough to be able to tackle this. But I find – and I look at something like this, that cabinetry will speak to me. It will tell me how it went in and what has to be done to take it apart. If you look at it very carefully, you can usually figure it out, because somebody put it in to begin with and there’s got to be a way to disassemble it. Does that make sense?
MARGE: Yes, that does. Now, since there are two levels – one on the bottom and one on the top – the ball bearings would be in the bottom level? So that if I start unscrewing everything, where would I find them? Does it make a difference if it’s a two-shelver? There’s one shelf way on the bottom, then there’s a space and then you have another shelf.
TOM: Mm-hmm. Right. I don’t think it makes a difference because I think it’s all part of the same assembly. And the ball bearings are going to be on the bottom, not the top. The top, it may have an access point, like an axle. But the spin is going to be under where all the weight is, OK? So that’s a side of it.
Does this broken kitchen cabinet carousel still move or is it too stiff?
MARGE: No, it still moves.
TOM: It still moves. What part of it is broken, Marge?
MARGE: The actual shelf itself. The top shelf appears to have dropped about 8 inches.
TOM: Alright. So here’s what I would do. If it was just the top shelf that dropped, I would look for a way to repair that top shelf. And I can’t tell you exactly how to do it but probably figure out a creative way. If that’s dropped down – if it’s sitting like on a center column, then you have to get something up underneath that to support it.
MARGE: OK. Alright. So that’s what I’ll do.
TOM: Good luck.
The top layer of Marge’s lazy susan dropped down. The ones that I have are tightened to the center post with a set screw on the top of each tray. Assiming that screw is not stripped or broken, she should take everything off of that layer, loosen the set screw, lift it back to where it belongs, and retighten that set screw!
You guys stopped just when it was getting good. What does one use to support the top shelf?
Jeannine – It depends on how the shelf was originally supported. One universal way to do this would be to cut strips of wood to install under the shelf where it connects with the body of the cabinet. These would act as shelf supports. In most cases these can be strips that are 3/4 on an inch thick by about 1 and 1/2 wide. They can be attached using a drill with a phillips bit and drywall screws. Hope this helps and thanks for listening.