Kitchen Cabinet depth

[51]

Hi all. How much can the depth of a kitchen base cabinet be reduced by? I have B & Q cabinets.

Thanks.

Arthur

[Robbo]

If you go more than halfway back you'll have the top fall off

;-^

[The Medway Handyman]

As much as you want really, as long as you leave enough room for the hinges.

Tell us more?

[51]

I'm trying to make enough room for cokker, washer and dishwasher between kitchen sink side and opposite side. If I can pinch 50-60mm from the side opposite the sink I will get a full size dishwasher in.

Arthur

[The Natural Philosopher]

As much as you like, I think you need about 3" to attach the doors to, thats all.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Go for it. Only problem is that the backs won't fit. They are generally in by about 50mm..however they aren't a lot of good anyway..you can simply tack them on the back of your 'new' units and space away from the wall.

You WILL lose initial rigidity if you go further than the strap across the back as well. (sounds like a S&M instruction leaflet dunnit?)

[Andy Burns]

The B&Q "IT" base cabinets have about 7.5cm behind the slot for the back panel, if you need more than that, you'd have to either have no back panel, or use a router to cut a new slot, or something else like just duct tape the back panel on ...

Also if you trim too much off the back, you'll need a 16mm drill to reposition the rear legs, and cut down the shelf depth and new holes for the shelf supports.

The wall cabinets only have 1cm behind the back panel.

[Andy Burns]

can confirm you'd get away with 70mm without touching the back panel.

[Owain]

That's all they have in the display ones.

The drawers tend not to work so well though.

It's a shame really, 3" deep units would be the right size for my kitchen-ette.

Owain

[Stuart Noble]

I've done half depth runs before now. Helps to have a circular saw/ batten set up, especially for the worktop. You may lose the rear fixing on the carcass, and those things are not that easy to re-position

[Andy Burns]

If you only need *half* depth, it's easier to use wall cabinets instead of base units, and just buy spare legs for them ...

[51]

Perfect stuff, gents.

Thanks.

Arthur

[The Medway Handyman]

I've done it as well, no problem. If you lose the backing slots you can recut them with a router. If you lose the rear top batten you can just screw it in.

[John Rumm]

I have done it with Screwfix cabinets - reduced by 100mm, and it was just possible to get the drawers to still fit in the base units without needing to adjust the drawer boxes.

[Weatherlawyer]

How did you manage to open them after stuffing a full size dishwasher in the space thus created?

[Lobster]

Just had to reduce some Howden's (=MFI) cabinets - by about 150mm - which involved recreating all the joints/holes at the back; unfortunately they've now changed the drawer design into prefabricated metal ones which (along with the preformed metal runers) are pretty well impossible to cut down, which was a bit of a bummer. So ended up converting my "drawer-line" units into "hi-line" ones!

David

[John Rumm]

That was the case with the screfix ones - had I have needed more than

100mm off the depth, then I would have had to have remade the drawer boxes.