SargeW
Site Team
The other half of my trip to the carpenters shop was to remodel the drawers that hold the kitchen utensils on the right side of the sink. While conviently placed, they were not designed well. The first thing the DW noticed when we walked in the rig the first time was that there was no handle on the top drawer blank. At the time I assumed that there was an obstruction behind the blank so there was no drawer. Even so they should have put a handle on it. Within a few weeks I has ordered one from Winnie. It sat in a drawer for over a year! But adding the handle greatly improved the look of the set of drawers.
Added handle to top drawer blank
Later, a buddy and I were poking around the cabinets and discovered a huge amount of wasted space behind the drawer bank. Not only would a top drawer fit, by removing the plywood backing that Winnie had fabbed into the cabinet, we were able to increase the depth of the drawer from 10" deep to 20" deep! I am assuming too that Winnie did not put in the top drawer because it was not as deep as the other drawers. Here is what the wife found to do with her new "skinny" drawer.
Knife block drawer
The drawer is about 3" deep and holds her knife block perfectly.
To gain the maxium benefit from the new drawers, we built an angle on the back of the drawer to accomidate a cabinet brace in the back of the cabinet. The right side of the drawer is 17" deep, and the left corner is 20" deep. The extra space was HUGE for the DW storing her kitchen goods.
Deep drawers!
I am assuming that is why Winnie chopped the drawers off so short to start with. Make it easy and quick and move on.
Before most of these kitchen gadgets wouldn't even fit in the drawer, let alone all the extra stuff that she needs.
Kitchen tools
As a finish to the drawer project, this is was a skinny 6" wide cabinet that is about 23" tall and had no shelves. To make it more usefull, we added 3 shelves with a 1" lip on the front to hold all the DW's cooking spices. It freed up a lot of other shelf space that was better used for larger grocery items.
New spice cabinet
I applaud Winnie for making a cabinet here at all. It is wedged in next to the drawer bank, and is triangle shaped. The shelves were cut to angle, and fitted in the space. The fronts were added after the shelves were in place (a geometry problem). But Dan, my carpenter did a great job figuring it out.
All in all we recovered a great deal of usable space, with not too much effort. Dan made the drawer bases in his shop and reattached the original fronts. All of these projects, the kitchen drawers and spice shelf, and the bedroom clothes hamper were done in one day. The hamper took an additional day because we had to order the front door and had the cabinet color matched for stain. Well worth the time and money.
Sarge
Added handle to top drawer blank
Later, a buddy and I were poking around the cabinets and discovered a huge amount of wasted space behind the drawer bank. Not only would a top drawer fit, by removing the plywood backing that Winnie had fabbed into the cabinet, we were able to increase the depth of the drawer from 10" deep to 20" deep! I am assuming too that Winnie did not put in the top drawer because it was not as deep as the other drawers. Here is what the wife found to do with her new "skinny" drawer.
Knife block drawer
The drawer is about 3" deep and holds her knife block perfectly.
To gain the maxium benefit from the new drawers, we built an angle on the back of the drawer to accomidate a cabinet brace in the back of the cabinet. The right side of the drawer is 17" deep, and the left corner is 20" deep. The extra space was HUGE for the DW storing her kitchen goods.
Deep drawers!
I am assuming that is why Winnie chopped the drawers off so short to start with. Make it easy and quick and move on.
Before most of these kitchen gadgets wouldn't even fit in the drawer, let alone all the extra stuff that she needs.
Kitchen tools
As a finish to the drawer project, this is was a skinny 6" wide cabinet that is about 23" tall and had no shelves. To make it more usefull, we added 3 shelves with a 1" lip on the front to hold all the DW's cooking spices. It freed up a lot of other shelf space that was better used for larger grocery items.
New spice cabinet
I applaud Winnie for making a cabinet here at all. It is wedged in next to the drawer bank, and is triangle shaped. The shelves were cut to angle, and fitted in the space. The fronts were added after the shelves were in place (a geometry problem). But Dan, my carpenter did a great job figuring it out.
All in all we recovered a great deal of usable space, with not too much effort. Dan made the drawer bases in his shop and reattached the original fronts. All of these projects, the kitchen drawers and spice shelf, and the bedroom clothes hamper were done in one day. The hamper took an additional day because we had to order the front door and had the cabinet color matched for stain. Well worth the time and money.
Sarge
I have been in a thinking/planning mode for several months about changing my drawer boxes. For one, I don't have full extension slides, so everything at the back of the drawers is difficult to reach. I think in '06 the Vectra/Horizon (at least, maybe it trickled down the line) went to full extension.
