Fixing dressers

We made the mistake several years ago of starting to buy the Sauder "some assembly required" dressers from Walmart. Before too terribly long, we ended up with 5 of them. The dressers are actually kind of nice, they look nice, have lots of space, and have a thing so only one drawer at a time can open. (So you don't open the top 3 drawers and end up with the dresser falling on top of you.)

There have been a couple of problems with these things. First and foremost is that the girls have way too many clothes, and they stuff the drawers as full as they can, then they stuff some more. This busts out the bottom of the drawers. Usually the bottom gets busted out a little, they shut the drawer, and over the course of the day, the clothes push the bottom out more to the point that it causes problems for opening the drawer beneath.

The thing is on rails, when you are trying to get the stupid broken drawer out, and clothes are falling everywhere, the rails fall off. This is maddening to me for some reason.

I have been trying to get these things held together with the "spit and duct tape" method. (Not really, but I'll try to use screws to keep the bottom in, have to fix the back, all kinds of stuff.) Emma somehow got one of her drawers completely broken a couple of months ago.

The mechanism that prevents more than one drawer at a time opening is kind of sensitive to someone trying to open a second drawer with more than a little force. You could have a shirt sticking out one of the drawers, that's enough to hold the mechanism open. If you don't see it, you can apply too much pressure to the opening of a drawer that shouldn't open. The mechanism can break or fall apart from itself. Lily's dresser used to be closer to a window than it is now, we were always getting curtains stuck in the bottom drawer and holding the mechanism open.

Last week, we had 11 of the 15 big drawers in one state of broken or another. Tara's sister had the same sorts of problems with this dresser model, her solution was copious amounts of Gorilla Glue. I went out on Saturday and picked myself up some Gorilla Glue between conference sessions. (FYI, Gorilla Glue - made from the hair of gorillas, so it's stronger.)

This evening I finished fixing the last 2 broken drawers. We are banking on this working, because I have used enough glue that if the drawers break again, I may start a bonfire.

Sunday afternoon I made Mary an expert at putting clothing away in the drawers. I showed her how to stack her clothes, what level the drawers are actually full at, and talked about the benefits of not stuffing everything in the house into one drawer. She has been sharing her new found wisdom with the other girls. Hopefully it will stick and I won't have to go out in search of a better type of dresser. (Which would likely cost $300 a piece - $1500 just for the girls.)

The dressers would have been easier to fix if I had my hammer. It's at Drew's house. I tried talking several people into bringing it to me, but I guess I need to go down and get it myself from his place. I also need to get my ladder from him, I'm thinking about either finishing the closet I started a year and a half ago, or installing a ceiling fan in the front room. (Just in time for Winter. But who wants to be up in the attic for hours on end in the Summer? I mean besides Drew?)