The 1/4" MDF bottoms of these drawers are stapled to the drawer frames. The bottoms are not rigid enough to support contents without sagging. And they are so low to the cabinet frame that the sagging centers scrape and squeak against the cabinet face
My first inclination would be to glue cross-braces onto the bottom of the drawers, but there is no room for anything between the drawer bottom and the cabinet face. I could perhaps glue and staple cross-braces inside the drawer.
Another thought was to apply a lubricant to the bottom of the drawer. Is there something that would stick to MDF and be lubricious enough to stop the squeaking and not wear off?
Last idea was to get a very thin sheet of teflon or UHMW and glue that to the bottom of the drawer and/or the top of the cabinet frame where it is rubbing. What material would be best, and what adhesives would hold it to MDF? –
How can this scraping, or at least the squeaking, be mitigated without rebuilding the drawers?
See the scrape marks in the following photo
Best Answer
You could use anti-friction tape.
The other thing you could consider is sheet metal. You could get 20g sheet metal and use that to make cross bridging. It might be rigid and thin enough to help support the bottom.
Another idea would be to split the interior drawer into two sections and use the drawer divider to pull up the bottom (either splitting the space side to side or back to front).
Outside of that you are better off rebuilding the drawer and using something reasonable as a drawer bottom. Hard to imagine 1/4 MDF being used as a drawer bottom - did they run out of cardboard?