Layout

Reply to: This is what we did in our corner step-in pantry: [The MW, btw, didn't fit so it is not in the pantry as originally planned.] Also, SharB once posted her measurements but the thread has long since fallen off. I saved them and here they are: +++ [Sharb's] pantry measures 4 feet wide by 5 feet deep. Starting at the top: 18" top shelf to ceiling (Things I don't need often or are lightweight.) 15" to next shelf (cereal boxes, etc.) 10" to next (canned goods, etc.) 10" to next (canned goods, etc.) 16" to next (small appliances) 20" from bottom shelf to floor (extra waters, heavy items) The depth of the back shelf and the right side 12". The left side is 6" and holds my [SharB's] husband's hot sauces and other small items.

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Reply to: I don't know - it seems to be a combination of things. Particle board v. plywood, but also the glide weight rating and the way the drawer itself is made. I certainly agree about using plywood sides - but then everyone knows I'm a plywood head. I also agree that you need 100 to 150 lbs slides. Blum also makes those in under mount glides. Storing heavy dishes across a long drawer will "rack" the drawer - particularly using unbalanced loads (the left front corner has a lot more weight than the rest of the drawer but its closely followed by the entire front edge). Racking means the drawer itself twists or bends out of shape - usually putting a lot more pressure in one place. Always hard to tell in photos, but it looks like the left front fastener failed somewhat indicating the same thing (drawer sinking towards the front). The drawer itself may need to be built "stronger" than say a 30" drawer because a 42" drawer is more prone to twisting - the longer the piece of wood, the easier it is to deform it. A lot of drawer sides are kinda overbuilt, but sometimes, the drawer bottom is skimped on. Plus I'm pretty sure it should have a stabilizer bar or two across the drawer width. Those bars are usually found under the visible drawer bottom but are easily seen by looking under the drawer if its out of the cabinet. The "bar" can be a flat piece of wood - its just an expression. They help prevent the drawer bottom from warping due to weight by providing extra stiffness to the drawer bottom. That helps spread load a little. The stiffness helps prevent racking so both sides of the drawer travel at the same time. It may be that once the maker has one of their engineers look at it, they'll refuse to replace it in its current size. You could get stubborn about it with a lawyer maybe - you have a warranty after all. But it might take a long time and get nasty - possibly involving suing the place that sold these as well as the manufacturer. If you don't want to push that hard, a suggestion is to get a 33-36" cabinet with heavy duty glides and combine with a 6-9" base pullout, tray cabinet, pull out towel holder or single column of wine storage. In practical terms, that means the pitchers get stored elsewhere OR the white dishes find a new home depending on the size of the additional cabinet you choose.

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Reply to: Re "I have Bluhmotion glides and the heavy duty glides are side mount and not bottom mount, so would need new drawers at minimum." I don't think that's true. If you look at the brochure, (http://www.blum.com/us/en/01/30/10/) the tandem Blumotion 563 series is rated at 100 lbs. and the 569 series at 150 lbs. They are *both* bottom mount, and the dimensions look similar. I built a bunch of cabinets with these last year and would suggest the 569 for this drawer. And just to chime in with the others, the cabinet sides should have been made of cabinet-grade plywood, which is quite stable in a well-made carcase. Particle board in that application is asking for trouble. It sounds like your KD is BSing you.

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Reply to: I had the 42 inch drawer failure and we all learned from the experience. 1. The weight of the drawer and insert counts as total weight. My glides were rated for 75lb. The drawer weighed 30 and the dish pegs weighed 8. My dishes weighed 75. 2. Standard installation was 3 screws into the glides - full extension puts a lot of stress on the front screw. For large drawers consider heavy duty glides and extra screws for support. I still love my big drawers but the one 42 was modified into a drawer inside a drawer with heavy duty Blum glides. The others had more screws added. I have 42, 37, 30 as my main drawer banks. See my old post - recipe for disaster for pictures and final solutions. The only. Drawer with heavy duty hardware is the dish drawer.

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Reply to: I also have very wide drawer stacks. My dish drawers are 36 inches wide, and my pot drawers are 40. I have one center pull. I love them! They're roomy enough for a 12 piece place setting, bowls, cups, and my pot drawers handle all of my cookware with no crowding. Cj

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Reply to: oh yeah, baking station. if you bake a lot its worth being organized and you'll bake even more. my big gripe before the reno was if i wanted to make biscuits for dinner at the last minute i'd be scrubbing a counter clean to knead dough. now, voila. nothing happens here except baking, and i dont have to open and close cabinet doors to get the ingredients. baking sheets are in a deeper than normal deep drawer, which allowed for 2 normal drawers above for measuring cups and spoons etc etc.

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Reply to: A few more details: Hidden knife storage in island: Plug molds and under counter lights: Pantry: Spice drawer: A few before/afters:

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Reply to: I was originally planning to use a pullout, but changed it to a two-drawer cabinet. The top drawer is a "chef's drawer," an idea I found somewhere on GardenWeb. I cut down the side of the drawer adjacent to the range. It's super convenient to grab oil, vinegar or salt while cooking. The bottom drawer houses cutting boards, wire racks and spatter shields. Spices are on the door of an upper cabinet. For me, the key to spice storage is one-deep, whether in a drawer or on shelves. [Chef's Drawer[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/storage-beyond-the-norm-eclectic-kitchen-seattle-phvw-vp~9278680)

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Reply to: Stan Z is right. If you're going to store oils in a pull out, you do need to be concerned about drips. I think a greasy olive oil bottle would ruin the wood pretty quickly. I used an Oxo Stemware Mat inside mine. Easy to pull out and wash. Tall spices like seasoning salt and popcorn salt are in the pullouts, as is my flour shaker, my sugar shaker, and all my flavorings. But for small spice storage, I did this:.

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Reply to: I've had a spice pullout and it was completely unusable. The spices didn't fit and I couldn't read them. Fast forward to new kitchen. I installed a Rev-A-Shelf pullout with adjustable levels. I only installed two of the four. I'm able to store my oils on one shelf and my vinegars on the bottom shelf. A complete success. So, can I recommend it? Yes, but it was a learning experience. Here is a picture of my pull out. I really like the result. I put my utensils in an extra large drawer. These are drop down shelves made by Tupperware and available on line at Target for $11.00 each. This is my spice cabinet solution. I hope this helps.

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Reply to: @mrsK I'm using the Hettich heavy duty industrial slides. The Blum 569 wasn't enough for me. For example, one stack of dinner plate was 30 lbs. Yikes!!! The weight of the drawer, weight of the slides and 4 stacks of dishes exceed the rating. That's not counting the plywood dish divider. I could use the Blum if I go for shallow drawers but then will lose an additional 1 3/4" of storage per drawer. My pots drawers are 48" and I plan to store things vertically so the weight of 10-12 pans (some cast iron) makes a difference. If your drawers are less wide, you won't have an issue with Blum because you will have less inside.

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Reply to: I have done TV cabinets this way. You have to make an opening using the adjacent cabinets as the side walls and mount the hardware on those walls. It is technically tricky to do because all of the adjacent cabinets have to hang very true for the hardware to function properly. If you are using a custom cabinet maker discuss it with them. I used Hafele hardware but the perfectly square opening matters more than the hardware manufacturer.

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Reply to: End grain block is better for actual heavy use. This is one we did out of walnut.

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Reply to: Grace here are some photos:

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Reply to: I have plugmold under the lip of my island top. It is actually recessed into the cabinet (end panel) so it does not stick out. I do not have quite the 1.5" overhang due to the slab size. We probably only have about an inch (we had to cut the island size down a few inches to accommodate the slab we wanted). The plugmold is black and our cabinets are dark cherry, so it isn't noticeable. I also have a plugmold strip under the overhang of the seating area in case we need a plug for a buffet or laptop. IIRC, the NEC requires one receptacle for the island and the 6" overhang rule only applies if it is the only receptacle. Of course, verify this for yourself and check with your local permitting office. I love the plugmold on the island and under the perimeter cabinets. I would have installed a traditional outlet on the backsplash if we kept a coffee maker or any other appliances out on a regular basis, but we do not.

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Reply to: Thanks for the compliment, a2gemini. My LEDs are from superbrightleds.com. They're called LuxBars. I was originally going to install the tape lighting from them. But I decided on these instead. I really like them and they're dimmable. I'm still using tape lighting, but inside the cabinet. I also saw that some members posting in the lighting forum have had a good experience with this company, so it helped me decide. I did contact their customer service and they were very helpful. Back to the plugmold. I did consider an angled application. But that would have made them more visible. So I decided to go flat against the bottom of the cabinet. I thought the pigtails might be too visible, but it hasn't been an issue. But then again, I only leave one appliance plugged in all the time, the coffee maker. I think it also depends on the backsplash. On mine, the cords aren't too noticeable when plugged in. But I could see a white or very light backsplash being an issue. Here is a link that might be useful: LuxBars

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Reply to: I too would try very hard to not interrupt my beautiful waterfall with an outlet... in addition to the ideas above, could you do something like;

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Reply to: Hey folks, Thanks for all of the earlier feedback. Demolition is well underway, and we are on to framing, and in a few weeks, plumbing/electrical. I need to finalize much of the kitchen layout ahead of plumbing rough-in. So I am updating this thread with current design in hope of getting additional feedback to see if there are any issues/concerns I haven't considered. (Let me know if it's best to start a new thread given the age of this post - I opted to keep it for continuity.) Latest floorplan: Orientation: North (top of diagram): living room area (open) South (bottom of diagram): dining room area (open) West (left of diagram): deck/water view Elevation of galley wall (east) Elevation of island (west) Based on the earlier feedback, we have: Aisle width: Increased the width between the island and galley/appliance wall to 42" Prep sink: Eliminated the prep sink - there didn't seem to be a compelling reason to have two sinks with this layout, and ultimately I didn't want to give up the cabinet / drawer space that this would impinge on Cleanup/Prep zone: Instead, placed dishwasher/sink/trash receptable on island in a way that hopefully creates reasonable separation of the cleanup, prep, and cooking zones (despite the fact that the prep and cleanup zones necessarily share a sink). Dishwasher: We opted to place the dishwasher on the left end of the island so that it was close to the dining area, next to the sink, and away from the cooking area. I considered moving this a little more to the center of the island to facilitate closer proximity to dish/flatware storage, but didn't like the fact that it would likely be close to the cooktop and further from dining area (i.e. inviting more traffic into cooking areas) Sink: We opted to place this to the right of the dishwasher so that it would be accessible to the cleanup area, adjacent to the prep area but mostly out of the way of the cooking area (it is not back to back with the rangetop) Trash: We opted to place this to the right of the sink so that it was near the prep area, but accessible from the cleanup area. (I read several threads that recommended trash being closer to prep area than cleanup area) Cooktop: Centered on the galley wall, both for aesthetics and function Ovens: I looked at a lot of layout options, and ultimately opted to stack the ovens bottom to top with a 30" Convection Wall Oven (bottom), 12" Warming Drawer (middle), and 24" Convection Steam Oven (top), with the 18" (tall) microwave being placed undercounter on the island, opposite the main oven stack. (All Miele - separate thread on this). The top of the oven stack is 68.5" off the ground in this configuration, which is roughly eye level for me (6' / 72" tall). The rationale was centered around assuming that the CSO would be the primary oven so we placed that in the most optimal spot, and that it would also be best to have that higher up for safety of venting steam. We also wanted to keep the warming drawer at an accessible level. The only downside is that the 30" CO/wall oven is at a less useful height (below counter), but there wasn't a great option that we liked for placing this at waist/eye level. I considered this acceptable if this is the secondary oven. We considered putting the microwave next to the refrigerator for easier access (seems like a lot of people like that), but ultimately decided that we liked the aesthetics of the current location + the increased pantry size that this offers. Thoughts/feedback/concerns on this layout? Overall I am pretty happy and thinks it meets most of our design goals but want to see if there are any yellow/red flags in what we have planned. The only things that are giving me a bit of pause are: Aisle width - Once demo is complete I am going to try to get some boxes to mock out the 42" wide aisle to see if that feels sufficient. Taped out, it seemed fine, and from reading this forum, it seems like a good number of folks "get by" with 42" despite multiple cooks, but I know there was feedback on this thread to get this to 48" as a more standard two-cook width. To do that, I would likely take up @buehl's suggestion and reduce the walkway behind the island, and potentially the size of the island itself. But I kinda like those dimensions and chose to compromise on the kitchen aisle width a bit. Dishwasher/sink placement - is this a good placement to have a good flow for prep, cooking, and cleanup? Cabinet / drawer layout - we have a few weeks before we place the cabinet order so have time to fine tune this still, so I plan to go over this more closely next so that I can optimize the layout for my storage needs. If there is anything immediately problematic it would be good to know! Thanks in advance for any insight, everyone has been immensely helpful in helping me with planning and design of this kitchen! Joe

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