I have a sliding drawer in one of my lower kitchen cabinets that conceals a pair of trash tubs. It came with the house when we bought it and it's a nice way to have a wastebasket that's out of view. The two tubs sit in a rack with two holes in it for the trash tubs to hang in, and that rack is affixed with some custom welded tabs that attach it to a pair of otherwise normal-looking drawer slide rails. But those custom tabs are specific to this model of device; you can't just buy a replacement part at a local hardware store because it's not a common standard part.
Now this isn't one of those posts where I bitch about poor craftsmanship. This slide-out tray is actually pretty cool and lasted fourteen years. But one of the drawer slides broke a clip that was holding bearings in place. Bearings fell out and one of the slides became untracked. When I started repair analysis, I decided I didn't want to buy a new fixture that was an exact replacement. I wanted something simpler, more easily found, and more cost effective.
I found a dual tub sliding shelf on Amazon for about half what an exact replacement would have cost me. It was a simple metal cage that held the two tubs, and was sitting on a set of interlinked sliding bars mounted on the floor of the cabinet rather than on the sides like the old one. That all looked like it would be a much simpler mechanism to install and maintain.
Amazon did its usual good job of getting it to me in two days. But it didn't take long after that to get frustrated with terrible instructions. This is not a super complicated device and the manufacturer made it about as goofy and confusing as they could have.
First, you assemble the tub cage by fastening to side rails to the bottom of the cage. That should have been really easy except that the instructions tell you to use a screw, and when you look at the parts, there are only three screws for the step which has four connection points, two on each side, left and right. Why are there only three screws?
There are another five screws of the same diameter and threading, but about two millimeters shorter than the three identified for the first step. So if you're careful, you can also use one of those to handle the fourth screw point on the cage assembly. The instructions say you can watch an installation video, but the video does a terrible job of explaining the three screws for the four connection points in the first step.
Next is the step where you complete the tub cage by adding two light bars to the top front and top rear of the cage to form the rectangular shape. Already at this point the cage is sort of leaning funny, but these two bars to help correct the form. The back one is super easy to install, it's just a dowel with curved ends that you drop into some holes on the back of the cage and it's held by gravity. But the front bar has two screw holes and you have to use two short screws to affix; the thread tolerances here are not very good and the screws go in with difficulty. However, I finally get it done.
The next step is to affix the tub cage to the sliding rails. That's not too hard, and you use the leftover screws from step one. They do work even if a little on the short side.
The next step is tricky. It is time to install the cage and rail assembly into the cabinet, and to affix mounting brackets to the door. This isn't difficult but requires some precision because if the cage or the door brackets are installed out of alignment, you'll be stuck unscrewing the parts and having a bear of a time getting them lined up so they'll all fit together and also have the door fit nicely against the cabinet so it covers up the opening correctly.
Here's where the instructions won a few points back for the manufacturer from me. The kit includes two paper templates. One has outlines of the cage assembly footprint. You put this one down on the cabinet floor with the front edge marked, and you line it up with the front edge of the cabinet space. The second template is for lining up the brackets at the proper location on the door panel. It also is marked so that you can line up the bottom edge to the first template's front edge. There are markings on both templates so you can line them up. The idea here is that the templates will show you where to start your holes for the wood screws. It actually works well and I got it right the first time, getting the cage assembly fastened to the cabinet floor and the door brackets on the door. Then the final step is to mount the door brackets to the front of the cage where there are two housings to put the door brackets in.
The only problem I had in this last step was that the wood screws the manufacturer provides are not very good quality and I broke a couple of them on installation. Fortunately enough of them worked that the job could be completed.
In the end, I gave the unit four out of five stars. I wanted to give three-and-a-half, but Amazon doesn't support half star ratings. While the price was much nicer than the OEM rack and rails I had before, it wasn't exactly cheap, and you can tell the quality is middling at best. It does, however, work, and if I get ten years out of it it'll have been a worthy purchase. If you end up getting one, get your own wood screws for the final steps.
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