Serious question, how long did it take you to realize drawer slides had left and right?

I was building a set of kitchen cabinets for my sister in law last month and spent literally 90 minutes fighting with a soft close under mount slide. Kept jamming up and I couldn't figure out why. After cursing and re measuring three times I finally noticed the little L and R stamped on the metal. Felt like a complete idiot. Has anyone else spent way too long on something that basic?

2 comments

2 Comments

simonl861mo ago

...and that's exactly how I felt the first time I tried to put together one of those cheap metal shelving units from the big box store. Spent a good hour trying to get the poles to line up with the shelves, kept thinking I was just bad at following directions. Turns out I was trying to put the middle shelf on the bottom row. The whole thing slides together like butter once you actually read the little diagram instead of just assuming you know how it works. Now I always check for left and right markings on anything with moving parts, learned that lesson the hard way.

betty_reed611mo ago

Yeah no kidding. It's the same with anything that comes with a manual these days. People just want to skip straight to the doing part and then get pissed when it doesn't work, then blame the instructions. I see it all the time with furniture, with kitchen gadgets, even with stuff like setting up a new phone. Nobody wants to admit they might have missed something simple, they'd rather swear it's broken.