Not Sexy - Just Plain Functional

Not all woodworking projects end with a sexy finish photo. Some are strictly about improving the way something works. Our neighbor's kitchen is a dark old thing, dating back to the 60's or 70's. It’s an inexpensive, factory-made kitchen with every drawer falling apart and at this point the old single under-mount slides are worn-out and failing. She was frustrated with how difficult it was to work in. They had the typical configuration of 'a drawer above a door' which made it more difficult to see and get to items in the bottom of the cabinet, behind the door. They really needed cabinetry where everything gets stored in its own place and is easily accessible so they asked me to stop by and give them some advice.


They are a young couple with three kids and as much as they would have liked us to build them a new kitchen, it was outside their budget. So I thought about what could be done with the existing carcasses. We designed drawers and sliding shelves to sit-behind doors and we replaced the existing drawers with new ones that were sub-divided (to their specifications). We added to that a cabinet to house (and hide) a good sized garbage pail and custom built a spice rack to a certain width to mount near their stove. I also explained that a good coat of paint to all the faces would help them realize their 'new' kitchen and that was something they could do themselves.


In order to best install all these drawers, we had to create internal side walls (where there were none) and filler strips so the slides were flush with the faceframe's openings (and, in a few cases, built-up an additional 1/4 of material so the slides would clear any door that couldn't be swung out fully to clear the opening). This first shot shows what we were dealing with...