|
The client had recently purchased a town home with a kitchen of cherry
cabinetry. One of the units was a pantry with nothing more than adjustable
shelves. A contractor had installed pull out drawer units at the homeowners
request. He built the pull out drawers using poplar with thin plywood
bottoms. He mounted each drawer on a single bottom mount drawer guide. The
results had no esthetic connection to the beautiful cabinetry of the
kitchen, and the drawers all rocked side to side due to a single supporting
guide upon which the drawer had to balance. The work of the contractor is
shown in the top row of photographs.
Careful measurements
were taken of the cabinet interiors and new drawers were constructed. The
drawers were made of solid cherry and stained to match the existing
cabinets. Now the pull out drawers match the esthetic of the cabinet woods.
And, each drawer has been fitting with a handle that matches the existing
cabinetry hardware. That solved the esthetics issue. Each drawer is now
supported by two bottom mount guides with a load rating of 200 pounds for
the pair. This eliminates the instability of the old drawers. The
drawer guides are mounted to solid cherry cross members, whereas the old
drawers had the single guide screwed to a thin plywood drawer bottom. The
new drawers are rock solid and quite stout. And they look like they are part
of the original cabinets, although these drawers are truly an upgrade even
to drawers in the other base units of the kitchen cabinets. |