Pots and Pans Drawers Should Be In The Building Code

[DerbyDad03]

I have. a mid-1950?s kitchen with stick built cabinets. There are n o individual boxes, e.g. behind

3 doors is one large open space. I have been (very slowly) doing some upgra des, like building new utensil drawers, etc.

Over the past month or so, I converted one base cabinet section from 3 door s to 4 drawers. There are 2 double wide drawers for pots and pans and 2 single drawers for plastics containers, lids, etc.

Holy crap, what a difference! No more crawling on the floor to find that sm all pot that got pushed to back of the bottom shelf. No more grabbing the flashlight to find that missing lid. SWMBO is so happy that she says I don't have to do anything el se, the drawers are enough. ;-)

I was able to use the old doors (along with some spares that were in the sh ed from when my neighbor had his kitchen replaced [same builder, same original kitchen]) to make matching drawer fronts for the time being. After building a bookcase for SW MBO's cookbooks, I'm going to get back to building new doors and drawer fronts fo r the entire kitchen.

I don't know why we lived with base cabinet doors instead of drawers for so long. So many years of inconvenience. Pots and Pans drawers should be in the building cod e for all kitchen builds and remodels. People need to be protected from themselves. :

-)

[G Ross]

I took the lazy way out and installed seven deep plastic drawers in four lower cabinets for the different kinds of pots and pans. They work well. They have a base that screws into the shelf and the drawer slides in those. To remove the drawer you tilt up the front.

[DerbyDad03]

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Hey! This is rec.woodworking, not rec.plasticworking. :-)

Whatever saves the knees is what really matters. In a rental property that my grandfather built back in the 60's he inslalled base cabinets that had slide-out trays. They were single bay units, not double wide drawers like I built, so you lost a littl e space in each cabinet, but they made the cabinets easier to use.

I wonder why it's taken so long for large drawers to become a standard. I d on't know when they started, but they sure are great.

[Just Wondering]

That WAS a bit of sarcasm, right?

[krw]

I put wire pot drawers in the lower cabinets in my previous house. SWMBO wanted the lower cabinets left alone in this one. Made life simpler. ;-)

[DerbyDad03]

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Could it be that the wire drawers turned her off to drawers? I never liked the look of wire drawers and I don't think I'd like the feel.

However, the bold look and solid feel of a 2 bay wide wooden drawer on heav y duty undermount slides make a statement and are a pleasure to use.

[krw]

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.

The wire drawers had very good slides. No problems there but they were still drawers. Wood drawers take even more space.

[dpb]

On 23-Sep-17 8:54 AM, [e-mail] wrote: ...

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...

[krw]

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. ;-)

[dpb]

Build some storage down there and add a conveyor...or a drone. :)

I just finished helping w/ noon dishes the other issue with the ones here is they're face-frame and the drawer can't be wider than the opening which makes narrower by that amount behind the frames...thin things like a drippings collector tray are on edge against the side that would be hard to utilize the same space with the drawer.

If packing a space full divisions may reduce total storage of items, true, but a taller space with no dividers can also end up with a lot of wasted air above the items sitting on the one level or the difficulty of retrieving a given item is high owing to having to unstack/restack so much to get to it...catch 22.

There really is no good solution to "real world" storage imo; the mag's have gorgeous pictures of neatness but there's never really anything but the show place settings and a fancy copper kettle in sight...the daily-used stuff is nowhere to be seen.

[DerbyDad03]

(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!)

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.

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.

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.

[DerbyDad03]

Please see my other post about the ability to use the full height of the space when a drawer is installed. Full stacking is easy (and consistent) and access to the stack that used to be at the far back of the bottom shelf is now achieved by simply reaching down into the full extension drawer.

As I mentioned, the loss of a couple of inches in both width and depth and

1" in physical height has - at least in my case - been more than compensated for in *usable* height and the ease of organization of easily accessible drawers vs. the shelves, especially the bottom shelf.

We should also make sure that we are comparing apples to apples: My drawers are 2 bays wide. A 32" RO reduced to 30" of drawer space. Smaller single bay drawers would be reduced by another 1" *each*. The wider drawers not only allow for less loss, but gain the advantage of allowing the use of large and/or odd shaped items because of the wide open real estate. We are definitely overlapping the space that would be taken up at the "center" of 2 single wide drawers. Yes, we lost the space behind the left and right face frame, but the ability to easily use the full height plus the ease of organization more than makes up for that loss.

[J. Clarke]

More to the point, build a shop down there and then use it to build her her dream kitchen.

[dpb]

On 23-Sep-17 2:42 PM, DerbyDad03 wrote: ...

Compared to this kitchen, that's huge! :)

And, I understood that; certainly having "all that room" would be a major boon here.

These are single units...I don't recall exact width, but

[krw]

Why? We have stairs. ;-)

Yes, and cookie sheets. Vertical dividers work better than drawers.

Variety. Things generally go back into the same space so vertical and horizontal dividers work. I liked the drawers, too, but she's SWMBO.

That's the point. It shouldn't. ;-)

[krw]

I have all sorts of saws but none will make the kitchen bigger. I might have even taken a wall down if it wouldn't lose the uppers and if it wasn't structural (all walls are in this house).

[krw]

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.

Did you keep the doors or make new fronts? How did it match?

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.

How much weight can the drawers take?

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

[DerbyDad03]

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.

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:

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:

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.

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

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.

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.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Nice size for a basement.

I converted the hall closet to a pantry/pot storage by adding a few shelves. It can take some big stuff now.

[DerbyDad03]

Great minds...

I did that to one of the 2 closets in the boys' old bedroom, now set up as a guest room. Waffle iron, crock pot(s), flower vases, extra large stock pots, etc. I was able to consolidate items that were stored here and there and/or took up too much room in the kitchen for the amount they get used.

Much neater and more efficient now that they are all in one place.