“I need more storage.” This is one of the most often heard requests when meeting with clients regarding designing a kitchen. More often than not it is no easy feat when working with some of Houston’s original kitchens.
The first solution is pretty obvious and the easiest. Remove the fir down and install full height cabinets. By installing 42-inch upper cabinets instead of the standard 30-inch cabinets your usable storage will increase by 33 percent.
Next, is to maximize the available space of the lower cabinets. Some layouts are space hogs with inside corners that use up valuable space while affording little in the way of storage. If the internal shelving is designed properly the storage it affords is tremendous. While a Lazy Susan may seem the most practical, it is in fact a poor use of space. Instead, consider a blind corner. In case you are wondering, a blind corner is a cabinet that is open to one side and closed off to the perpendicular side. While it may be somewhat inconvenient a blind corner actually results in affording the greatest amount of storage even though it is least preferred by homeowners. However, there are new items on the market to enhance the use of a blind corner. Also, there are swing-out shelves that can be retrofitted to your older cabinets or roll out baskets for ease in accessibility.
The use of drawers or lower cabinet pullouts can also aid in storage solutions. In effect, pullouts bring the back of the cabinet forward and allow for accessibility for taller items stored in the back with shorter items in the front.
The pantry is the final area of consideration. If the pantry is used for rarely used items it can be placed outside the work triangle. However, for daily use it should be close to the work triangle with adjacent counter space for convenience in loading or unloading pantry items.
Should you pantry be a closet or cabinet? If you have the luxury and space for a walk-in panty an important consideration is the placement of shelves. The lowest shelf should be about two feet off the floor at a depth of about 16 inches with subsequent upper shelves narrowing until they reach a minimum width of 8 inches. Otherwise, if you have a wide shelf at the five-foot level it will be impossible to reach the back of the shelf. Also a well-designed walk-in panty will have a designated area for your brooms and mops.
If you have space for only a small pantry consider a cabinet rather than a small closet to provide the greatest amount of storage. Roll out shelves placed at easy-to-reach levels provide more storage than fixed shelves. At a maximum depth of 24 inches, the pullout shelves should be close enough to avoid wasted space with the top pullout at eye level. As with your kitchen cabinets, pullout shelves bring the back of the cabinet to the front for easy access of the taller items. Then consider stationary upper shelving to be installed for little used items.
There is one final word on increasing usable space and that is in regard to the cabinet style. A frameless cabinet, sometimes referred to a European-style box cabinet, affords about 10 percent more usable space than a face frame cabinet. This is particularly true in regards to usable drawer and pullout space.
Contact your professional remodeling contractor to assist in solving your kitchen storage issues and designing a kitchen to fit your family’s everyday needs.
Written by Tom Pellegrin, CGR, of Heritage Construction.
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