Q: Are drywall screws acceptable for installing kitchen cabinets? If not, what screws should I use?
A: Doug Horgan, vice president of best practices at BOWA, a design/build remodeling company in McLean and Middlebury, Va., responds: When I started out in the remodeling business (back in the dark ages), I almost always installed kitchen cabinets with drywall screws. And maybe due to blind luck, I never saw a failure. But those kitchens are not a big sample size, and I have snapped enough drywall screws since to understand that I was taking a risk by using them.
First, I should point out that in this discussion, we are most concerned with wall cabinets that depend on attachment screws to support their weight—literally hanging from the wall. If an installation screw fails on a base cabinet, it’s not going to fall and possibly hurt someone or do damage. With that in mind, drywall screws start out with a couple of strikes against them.
The first drawback is the bugle-shaped head. Although it makes drywall screws a good choice for drywall, it makes them a poor choice for hanging cabinets. The tapered shape of the bugle head tends to bury itself in any material it’s screwed into, so that shape is not nearly as good at drawing a cabinet to the wall and keeping it there as is the washer head on screws that are designed specifically for attaching cabinets.
The next drawback to drywall screws is the Phillips-head drive, which requires you to apply pressure to avoid cam-out. Applying adequate pressure isn’t always easy when hanging a wall cabinet from below.
Most cabinet screws have Torx-drive or star-drive heads that keep the driver bit engaged with the screw with much less effort. These specialty screws are readily available at most building supply stores. GRK is one brand that’s now common at the big box stores; McFeely’s is also a good source that is sometimes even less expensive than the big box stores, if you don’t mind ordering online. Specialty cabinet-hanging screws add only $5 or $10 to the cost of a kitchen, so using them is a no-brainer.
Just as important as the screw type is the material you are driving the screws through and into. Stock cabinets are often made from low-grade material that can have trouble standing up to any kind of fastener. If the cabinet material is of questionable strength, reinforcing the cabinets with 1-by cleats inside or along the top back edge is cheap insurance. Then make sure that the screws hit the framing behind the cabinets. I try to use screws that will have at least 1 inch of thread going into the framing. I also try to drive screws into every framing member behind each cabinet.