Kitchen cabinet door won't close flush? It's the hinges.

The kettle boils. You close the cabinet door. It doesn't quite click home. You close it harder. Same thing. One side's sticking out, the other's flush. You leave it. It happens again next week.

It's the hinges. It's always the hinges. And it's almost always a two-minute fix.

Modern European hinges: three adjustments

Since the mid-1990s, almost every kitchen cabinet in the UK has had concealed European-style hinges. Two metal arms, a cup that sits in the door, a bracket that screws to the cabinet, and three tiny adjustment screws.

Open the door. Look at the hinge. You'll see:

• The front screw (closest to the door edge): moves the door in and out. Side-to-side adjustment.
• The middle screw (sometimes called the depth screw): pulls the door closer to the cabinet or pushes it away.
• The rear screw (closest to the hinge body): raises and lowers the door.

Not all hinges have all three. Older or cheaper hinges might only have two. But the logic is the same.

Which problem, which screw

Diagnose first. Close the door slowly and watch where it's off.

Door is higher or lower than its neighbour

Turn the rear screw on both hinges, same amount, same direction. Clockwise lifts, anticlockwise drops, on most hinges. Quarter-turn at a time. Check, adjust, check.

Door sticks out proud of its neighbour at the hinge side

Turn the middle depth screw clockwise on both hinges to pull the door closer to the cabinet. Half a turn. Check. Another half if needed.

Door is shifted left or right

Front screw on both hinges. Turn them equally. This is the tricky one. Tiny adjustments make a big visual difference.

Door won't stay closed

Either the catch is worn (magnetic catches weaken, push-to-open mechanisms tire), or the door is catching on a neighbour because of one of the above. Sort the alignment first. 80 percent of the time the "won't close" problem disappears when the door is actually sitting where it should.

When it's not the hinges

A couple of other causes worth checking:

• A loose hinge plate on the cabinet side. Open the door. Wiggle the hinge with the door still attached. If the bracket on the cabinet moves, the screws have loosened. Tighten them. If the holes have gone, use matchsticks and wood glue to pack, let dry, re-screw.
• A swollen door. MDF kitchen doors that have had a splash from a dishwasher can swell along the bottom edge. They never go back to the right size. Sanding a millimetre off helps. New door helps more.
• The cabinet itself has shifted. If the cabinet's pulled away from the wall (happens on older fitted kitchens), no amount of hinge tweaking will make the doors line up. Tighten the wall fixings first.

A quick tip for a whole run

If all the doors in a row are out, don't start with the worst one. Start at one end. Get that perfect. Work along. Each door you align gives you a reference for the next. Going in at the ugliest one and working outwards usually gives you a kitchen where the doors are all equally slightly wrong.

Cost if you'd rather it was sorted

A single wonky door: 15 minutes. I usually roll it into whatever else I'm there for. A full kitchen run of maybe 15 doors: 60 to 90 minutes. Around £50 to £70 start to finish.

And yes, I've done more than one job where the client said "I've been slamming that door for three years." Three years of banging cabinet doors fixed in five minutes. Still the most satisfying type of call.