Some angled steel brackets and a few screws, for strength, or epoxy glue, for looks
Liberal application of wood glue to all mating surfaces. Then clamp in place and let cure.
The cured wood glue will be stronger than the particle board the drawer is made from.
Second the wood glue. It’s stronger than wood
It’ll be ugly as all getout from the inside, but this is probably the only thing you can do aside from replacing the drawer or replacing the backer board.
That said, you should probably fix the primary reason this broke. That much force means:
- the drawer guides may also need work or it will happen again.
- the items in the drawer which may have jammed it shut should get reorganized to keep it from happening again.
- the temper may need some work if this was purely a result of unloading frustration on furniture. This fix may not cost a significant amount, but a bad temper can generate drastically more financial (and sometimes criminal) damage than moderate self control. I know this one well.
Or kids who have trouble remembering that kitchen cabinets and drawers are actually not indoor climbing walls
You’d be better off replacing that particle board piece stuck to the face with a real piece of wood, and securing that to the drawer with long screws, then screwing the gray face plate to the new drawer front.
This is my recommendation also. Honestly a cedar fence picket cut to size wouldn’t be difficult and would only cost $5 assuming you have a circular saw.
Regardless of what you do to fix the drawer, consider that its the weight of what you’ve got in the drawer that caused the failure. Consider either reinforcing the underside, and or waxing or lubing whatever the roller or mounting hardware is. The heavy weight causing drag is ultimately why this failed (along with it just being cheap as shit particle board).
When I’ve had this issue in the past, I’ve gone ahead and replaced and reinforced the whole thing with 1/4th inch plywood. You can run two dados up the face board and then run the plywood into those, then pin nail and glue.
Well, we had the bright idea of attaching 3m hooks to the inside of the drawer upside down, and hanging grocery bags from the outside to act as trash bags to swipe vegetable peels off the countertop (if that makes any sense). Coincidentally, we’ve decided not to do that anymore.
I mean thats what did this, without a doubt.
However, at this point, you need to reinforce the guts. Gluing and pinning are not going to be enough.
With no offense intended (because the fault is on the cabinet maker), that’s one of the flimsiest looking designs I’ve seen. In most cases, the face is just a plate attached to the cabinet itself.
As for fixing it, it looks like it was just stapled through the sides. I’d pull the staples and clean up the bits where the face ripped off. Maybe try filling in those parts of the face plate with some wood fill or bondo. Then you can run some glue along the cabinet and glue the face back on. Maybe run some L-brackets and nails/screws into it, too, if it still feels flimsy.
