Pullout cabinet shelves make kitchen storage easier
Even if your kitchen has adequate storage space, access may be another issue altogether. The lids for your pots and pans may require some calisthenics to retrieve from the back of a cabinet, and foodstuffs in your pantry can easily expire after migrating to an inaccessible point.
Pullout shelves are one way to improve the accessibility of storage at your home. These installations will allow you to quickly and easily find what you are looking for while preparing a meal.
This convenience can pay off in a number of other ways as well. The magazine Family Handyman says you won't have to bend down or get on your knees to pull something from a ground level cabinet. You'll get a better sense of your kitchen inventory, meaning you'll avoid buying duplicate items. And once you have organized your storage, you can find more room for infrequently used countertop items and have more space for meal preparation.
The shelves can be customized to best suit the materials you'll be storing. Those with a higher lip will contain bulkier materials such as pots or stacks of plates, while a lower lip is sufficient to hold kitchen utensils and other smaller items. Shelves with sloping sides are good for keeping items of varying sizes.
Many rolling shelves use roller slides to extend the shelf, while others use ball bearings. Rollers are easier to install, but won't extend entirely outside of a cabinet. Ball bearings are more expensive and harder to install, but extend farther and provide better access.
Other materials will also determine the cost of the project. Jan Soults Walker, writing for the National Association of Realtors' home improvement site HouseLogic, says solid wood is the highest quality material for the shelves. Plywood and metal baskets are less expensive options, but they will not be able to hold as much weight. Some shelving might be specially designed to hold certain items, such as garbage cans or baking sheets.
Make sure you won't be overloading these shelves. Pre-built units are typically rated to hold about 100 pounds, although more expensive slides can hold twice as much weight. Limiting the weight on a shelf to 80 pounds or less will help keep it working well.
Depending on the size and scope of the project, a professional may be able to install the shelves within a day. This work can be quite expensive if you are getting a custom installation with high quality materials. If you trust your own handiwork, you can also try to do install pullout shelves on your own.
Measure the size of your cabinets. Joseph Truini, writing for This Old House, says you can get an idea of how much space you need by opening the cabinet door and seeing where you need to place the slide to avoid the hinges or other obstacles. You may need to use wooden cleats to secure the slides.
Family Handyman recommends creating a "story stick" to avoid taking multiple measurements. Using a piece of scrap wood, you can mark important measurements such as the depth of the cabinet and the width of the slides while working on identically sized cabinets.
Don't make the pullout shelf too large. They can become too unwieldy if they are larger than 18 by 30 inches. In larger spaces, you can install a divider to break up the cabinet and create smaller shelves.
Temporarily removing the cabinet doors provides the easiest access to the interior space. The home improvement professional Ron Hazelton also recommends removing any drawers above the cabinet, reinforcing the horizontal supports, and cutting out the vertical supports.
Building your own shelves to fit the slides will allow plenty of room for customization. Truini says that you can then secure the slides, attach the slide rails to the shelf, and mount the shelf. Make sure the mechanism works well before putting the cabinet doors back on.
If you have removed any vertical supports, these should also be reattached. Hazelton says the cabinet doors should be able to cover up any sign of this cut.