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Replacement cabinet doors for a mobile or manufactured home
Yes, you can replace them, and made-to-size doors are usually the only thing that fits. Manufactured home cabinets are built to sizes that stock doors do not match, so a door cut to your opening in sixteenth-of-an-inch increments solves a problem that a fixed-size supplier cannot.
| What you find | Why | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Openings between stock sizes | Cabinets built to the home’s plan, not to a cabinet catalogue | Doors cut to your measurement |
| Thin or lightweight doors | Built to a weight budget for transport | A solid door, with hinges matched to the extra weight |
| Shallow or narrow cabinets | Space is tight and every inch was designed around | Doors from 5 by 8 inches upward |
| Boring that matches nothing | Hardware chosen by the home builder, not a cabinet standard | Bored to your pattern, or shipped blank |
Can I replace the cabinet doors in a mobile home?
Yes. And if you have already tried and found nothing that fits, the problem is almost certainly not your kitchen — it is that most cabinet doors are sold in fixed sizes, and manufactured homes were not built to those sizes.
Cabinets in a manufactured or mobile home are built to the plan of the home. The kitchen had a certain amount of wall to work with, and the cabinets were made to use it. That is sensible building and it is a nuisance later, because a supplier offering doors in three-inch steps has nothing that lands on your opening.
Why do stock replacement doors never fit?
Three reasons, and they compound.
- The openings are between sizes. A stock door range assumes cabinets were ordered from a catalogue. Yours were not.
- The doors are lighter than kitchen doors. Manufactured homes are built to a weight budget because they have to be transported. Cabinet doors are one of the places that budget gets spent, so the originals are often thinner than you would expect.
- The hardware is whatever the builder used. Which may be a European hinge, may be a face-mounted hinge, and is rarely documented anywhere you can find it.
None of that is a problem for a shop that cuts to order. It is only a problem for a shop that cuts to stock.
What sizes can I actually get?
Doors are made from 5 inches by 8 inches up to 49 inches by 96 inches, and drawer fronts from 5 inches by 5 inches. Everything in between is available in sixteenth-of-an-inch increments, so the door is cut to your opening rather than to the nearest size somebody happens to stock.
That lower limit matters more in a manufactured home than in a site-built kitchen, because the narrow cabinets either side of a cooktop or sink are exactly the ones a stock range does not cover.
How do I measure mobile home cabinet doors?
Start with one question, because it changes everything that follows: are you keeping your existing hinges, or fitting new ones?
If you are keeping your hinges, the old door is the reference. Take a door off and measure it, along with the boring: the diameter of the round cup in the back, how deep it is, how far it sits from the edge of the door, and how far its centre sits from the top and bottom. Do this for every door rather than measuring one and multiplying — in a home that has had a door or two replaced already, you may have more than one pattern.
If you are fitting new hinges, the cabinet is the reference instead. Measure the internal opening of each cabinet, then add the overlay you want the door to have on each side.
Either way, push the tape firmly against what you are measuring and do not let the tongue on the end slide. That slide is worth about an eighth of an inch, and on a door cut to your number an eighth shows.
A photograph of the cabinets with the doors shut, emailed alongside your numbers, is worth a paragraph of description. It shows the overlay you have without you having to work out what it is called.
Will the new doors be heavier than the old ones?
Probably, and it is worth planning for. A solid door is heavier than the lightweight original, and the hinges and the cabinet side have to carry it.
Two things follow. First, check what the existing hinges are rated for, and if in doubt, change them — we recommend Blum and Salice, and we sell the mounting plates alongside the doors so the whole set arrives together. Second, on a taller door, consider a third hinge rather than asking two to do the work.
If the cabinet sides themselves are thin, say so when you order. We do not build with particle board and never have, but plenty of manufactured homes were built with it, and a screw into a thin particle board side will not hold a heavier door for long. It does not stop the job — it changes what hardware makes sense, and that is better discussed now than discovered on a Saturday.
Is it worth replacing the doors rather than the whole kitchen?
In a manufactured home it very often is, because the boxes are usually sound and it is the doors that date the kitchen and take the wear. Replacing doors and drawer fronts changes everything you look at and touch, and leaves the plumbing, the worktop and the walls alone.
It is also the only version of the job that does not involve finding cabinets that fit a space built to a plan — which, as above, is the hard part.
What about the drawer fronts?
Replace them at the same time. A kitchen with new doors and original drawer fronts looks unfinished in a way that is hard to ignore once you have noticed it, and the fronts are usually the parts with the most wear because they are what people pull on.
Drawer fronts are made down to 5 inches by 5 inches, which covers the shallow drawers that manufactured kitchens are full of. Measure the existing front rather than the drawer box, and note how it is fixed — most are screwed through the box front from inside, and a photograph of the back of one front answers the question faster than a description.
Do I need to do the whole kitchen at once?
No. There is no minimum order, so a single damaged door is a perfectly normal thing to buy.
Doing it in stages has one catch worth knowing about: finishes vary slightly between batches, in the same way paint does. If you intend to do the kitchen in two goes, order a sample now and keep it, so the second batch has something to be matched against. If the whole kitchen is going at once, this does not arise.
How long does it take?
Two weeks from order to shipped. Doors arrive finished and, if you asked for it, bored for your hinges.
Orders go through the ordering system rather than by email, so have your measurements written down before you start — every number the form asks for, decided in advance. If you are not sure about any of them, ask first. A question before the order is free; a door cut to the wrong number is not.
Frequently asked questions
Are mobile home cabinet doors a standard size?
No, and that is the whole difficulty. They were built to the plan of the home rather than to a cabinet catalogue, so they frequently fall between the sizes that stock suppliers offer.
Can I get just a few doors rather than a whole kitchen?
Yes. There is no minimum. One door is an order like any other.
Will new doors match my existing cabinet boxes?
In colour, only if the boxes are being painted or the interiors are not visible when the doors are shut. Order a sample before committing to a finish — matching a twenty-year-old melamine from a photograph is not reliable.
What if my cabinets are not square?
Common in any older home. Measure each opening individually rather than assuming they match, and measure the width at top and bottom. Where they differ, tell us both numbers.
Do the doors come pre-finished?
Yes. Doors arrive finished and ready to hang, not as bare timber to paint.
Can you bore the hinge holes for me?
Yes, either for press-in hinges with the two 8mm dowel holes, or for screw-in hinges with the cup alone. Doors also ship blank if you would rather bore them yourself.