On Saturday, September 23, 2017 at 8:43:32 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 23 Sep 2017 12:18:20 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Saturday, September 23, 2017 at 11:20:12 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 23 Sep 2017 09:57:08 -0500, dpb wrote:

On 23-Sep-17 8:54 AM, wrote:
...

No, drawers were too restrictive. This kitchen doesn't have as many
base cabinets so she has to be more inventive stacking stuff in them.
...

That's a major problem here...there are only two so it is cramped and
why I've not added drawers. I have thought of a sideless drawer other
than very short lip with undermount slide to minimize height loss so can
get to the back more easily, though.

I turned side-mount HD slides flat and "doubled-up" the number for
support on a slideout shelf for the printer in office...it was old heavy
laser and that worked well without taking but 1/2" in height. Thinking
of trying it in the kitchen as well...

The problem is that the more a space is divided, the less "stuff" that
can be crammed in the space. My wife is a baker, so has all sorts and
shapes of baking pans. The kitchen in the previous house was about
double the size of this one (though this house is 50% larger). The
kitchen still isn't small but it's just not the dream kitchen she had.
She's not happy about losing her kitchen but I picked up 2000ft^2 of
unfinished basement. ;-)

(This is in response to both of your recent posts. This one and the one where
you used the words "too restrictive")

Obviously, each kitchen and each user has different requirements, so I'm
not pushing back on your comments, just relaying *our* experience. My wife
cooks extensively and also bakes. (I saw "apple pie" on her To-Do list
for this weekend. 'Tis the season. Yahoo!)

Absolutely. I was going to do whatever she wanted in this kitchen.
She didn't want anything done. She liked what I did in the previous
house but didn't want it here. Not my decision.

We found that even after losing 2" in width, 2" in depth and 1" in height,
we feel like we have *more space* than before. As a reminder, I converted a
open section of a base cabinet that had 2 doors and a center stile into 2
double wide drawers, each 30" x 20". The bottom drawer is 11" in height and
the top drawer is 8". I used full extension slides.

Did you keep the doors or make new fronts?

Yes! I kept the doors and turned them into fronts. It's only temporary because
I'm in the process of making all new doors and drawer fronts for the entire
kitchen. Winter project. Hopefully, we'll be painting the cabinets this spring,
then a new counter, then the doors and drawers fronts will be hung.

How did it match?

They "match" because the doors were converted to fronts, but I had to use
pieces and parts from the 3 doors and one spare that I had out in the shed.
Like I said, it's temporary and always there to remind me that I really need
to get busy on the new fronts.

This should help. The section in the images below used to have 3 doors, one
below each upper drawer. Behind the 3 doors was one big wide open space. 52"
wide, 23" deep, split horizontally about 60/40 by a shelf. Now it looks like
this:

https://i.imgur.com/GURglGF.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ohOgUe1.jpg

BTW, the small upper drawer boxes are also new, but of course the original
fronts fit just fine.

What I'm building will look like these:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/rtaproducts...sted-white.jpg

Like I said earlier, technically I did lose space, but I got it all back
(plus some) due to the inherent organization that the drawers allow.


Note: If I had installed single wide drawers into single bay base cabinets
this would be a totally different story. The fact that my drawers are 30" wide
with no center barrier makes a huge difference.

Yes, I can see that it would. I was thinking that you added drawers
_inside_ the base cabinets. I don't think I could match the cabinets
well enough.

Well, I did add drawers _inside_ the base cabinets. They would have taken
up too much room *outside* the cabinets. ;-)


How much weight can the drawers take?

The under mount slides for the 2 large drawers are rated at 120#, the side
mounts for the other drawers are rated at 100#. The under mount slides are
screwed directly to the shelf. I made Swingman's 3-sided frames for the side
mounted slides. Since there are no walls inside the cabinets, there is
nothing to mount the cabinet member to, so Swingman's solution works great.
The frames were mounted to the shelf with pocket screws.


The drawers allow us to easily stack bowls, pots, pans, baking dishes, etc.,
within each other in nice neat columns. While the same was *possible* before
the drawers, it rarely happened. After we'd dig out that big bowl from the
back, it rarely made it back under the smaller bowls in the same manner. The
same with the pots and pans, etc. It was always a mess until one of us decided
to organize the shelves. Even when organized, we often had to take out the
stacks the front to get to the stacks in the back and then reverse the process
after the various pots, pans etc. were washed. Now we just look down into
the drawers where we can see everything that is in them. Lift the stuff on top,
take out what you need, put the rest back down - all while standing up, not
down the floor looking sideways into the dark back of the bottom shelf.

We left nothing out when we filled the drawers and we now have room for other
items that were previously stored elsewhere. The main reason is that we are
now using the full height of the space on a consistent basis, something that
rarely occurred with just the shelves. I'll admit that I originally told
SWMBO that she might have to give up some space and some items, so we were
pleasantly surprised that we actually *gained* space because it is so easy to
keep everything organized. In addition, everything ends up in the same place
as before it was used so we know what is in each drawer and don't have to
search for anything.

I supposed if you are 100% consistent in putting everything back in the same
place every time, then your shelves will stay organized, but that wasn't
how it worked with us. However, perfect organization wouldn't prevent the
need to get down on the floor the get items from the back. That not an issue
with the drawers.

Her kitchen. Her problem. I stay out. ;-)

We both cook, although she does 99% of it, and does it much, much better.
We both do the dishes, so filling the cabinets was a shared frustration,
while filling the drawers is a shared pleasure.

The kitchen is old and tired. We've put it off for way too long, but the 4
kids are all out of college and out on their own, so we're doing some things
for ourselves while there's still time to enjoy it. Dropping $40K into a
complete gut job isn't how we want to spend our money, so I'm slowly
upgrading things little by little.