Lower cabinets - doors or pull outs?

[drumpriest]

I am in the process of building all new kitchen cabinets for our house. The uppers are built, and I'm starting on the lowers, but I have run into a question, which is do I use typical doors or pull-outs for the lowers.

Pull-outs being just really big drawers. LOML has already requested that if it's a door'd cabinet there be large pull out shelves inside, so I suppose I don't see a big difference between that and the big drawers, really, other than potential issues with drawer fronts of such large proportions.

Anyway make a 12H"x36W" drawer before and have issues with the face of it? The biggest that I've made was a 13"H drawer - file cabinet, and I just used 3/4 solid curly maple, seems to have weathered the past couple of years ok...

thanks for any insight.

[Tom Slick]

one issue is style. If you must have doors then internal sliders are the way to go. I find big drawers much more functional then doors/shelves and I think they look nice also. It is easier to load/unload/organize a drawer rather then a shelf because you are loading from the top and can stack like items. You do loose some space with doors/sliding shelves.
I have not had any issues with drawer fronts that are 36" wide by 12" tall, they are basically doors turned sideways. the drawer boxes are 1/2" BB ply, the front is a seperate piece, and it has good blum under mount slides.

[Bill in Buena Park]

Keith,
I've put drawer-like pull-outs behind doors in lower cabinets before, and it worked out pretty well. Instead of making them as deep as you mention, or just making a pull-out shelf, I believe a 3-4in deep drawer box that can hide behind the cabinet doors works best. Depending on what you store in the pull-out, you can vary the height separation between multiple pull-outs in the same base cabinet. The 3-4in box height and good spacing between pullouts allows for easy retrieval of items placed at the front of the box without the need to pull the box out.

[JR]

I believe a 3-4in deep drawer box that can hide behind the cabinet doors works best.

I've had those before and it worked out very well.

JR

[jking]

If you have several cabinets, I'd suggest a mix of both types. The shallow pull-out drawers behind cabinet doors work well for wide base cabinets & provide some adjustability. I've seen the drawer hardware mounted based on shelf pin locations. It allows for some adjustment if you find needing more height for the upper or lower drawer. A more traditional drawer works well for storing things that may need more confinement on the sides, or, for situations where you know exactly what you will store.

[jziegler]

Keith,
I've put drawer-like pull-outs behind doors in lower cabinets before, and it worked out pretty well. Instead of making them as deep as you mention, or just making a pull-out shelf, I believe a 3-4in deep drawer box that can hide behind the cabinet doors works best. Depending on what you store in the pull-out, you can vary the height separation between multiple pull-outs in the same base cabinet. The 3-4in box height and good spacing between pullouts allows for easy retrieval of items placed at the front of the box without the need to pull the box out.

That's what I did in my cabinets, and it works very well. I also left some room on the side of one cabinet that has none of the pullouts, which I use for cutting boards, cookie sheets, and other large items, which are stood on end. This is also partially to make better use of the space in my odd, small kitchen (corner with a chimney in it is hard to work with). And I do have the pullouts at different heights in the two sides, I just used a couple of 1x4 (or maybe 1x3, I don't remember) in the middle to mount the slides.

Jim

[jackellis]

I build pull-out drawers to fit in a lower cabinet with wide shelves using low capacity side-mounted slides. One drawer holds pots and a couple of heavy cast-iron skillets and it works well enough, though I would use better slides next time.

The one problem you may have if you also use doors is interference between the drawer and the door. If you use relatively shallow drawers spaced relatively far apart as Bill suggests, then you will want doors on the cabinets and this will become an issue.

[Popeye]

I'd had enough not being able to see what was in the lower cabinets and or not being able to use the space because I couldn't see what what was there so I went with all drawers with heavy duty full extension slides. Put all the every day dishes in a big drawer with a half in bottom. Pots and pans don't weigh much for the volume they take up. Best thing I could have done.


Kitchen wasn't finished when these shots were taken. Pat

[cabinetman]

I have not had any issues with drawer fronts that are 36" wide by 12" tall, they are basically doors turned sideways.

For large drawer fronts, that about covers it. There is both a functional and aesthetic difference. For a cabinet to be 36" wide, with pull outs behind doors, there should be two doors. It takes both doors to be open a minimum of 90 deg to have pull outs that are full width to clear the doors. For the two door cabinet, there could be a divider and pull outs on both sides or just one side.

If the design of the cabinet is such that doors are more fitting for the look than drawer fronts, then pull-outs make sense. If it will be a drawer base cabinet with drawer fronts, that look may be what either enhances the look, or may provide a break-up of monotony.

Wide drawers and pullouts will have some side to side movement, even with the best of slides. I find no difference in the use and dependability of shallow drawers over deep drawers.
.

[LarryG]

What Popeye shows is exactly what I'm going to do when I redo our kitchen.

If you're going to have pull-outs behind the doors, I can think of no meaningful advantage in having the doors at all unless you simply prefer the look. As Tom says, a large drawer front is just a door oriented differently. If you're using panel-style doors, you'd even build them the same way. The total amount of work is approximately the same, but by omitting the doors you'd save the cost of the hinges and (if you use them) catches.

One disadvantage to pull-out shelves or shallow drawers is that things can topple or get pushed off the back edge; the shorter the sides, the more often this can happen. With full-depth drawers, everything is always safely corralled.

[Schleeper]

Keith, I'm engulfed in the same project, and we're going the drawer route. There's too much wasted space in cabinets with doors, and unless you load them with pull-outs, much of it's hard to access. And if you're going to load your cabinet with pull-outs, you may as well make drawers.

Obviously, our decision was heavily influenced by the availability of affordable, high quality, full extension slides.

[charliex]

You won't regret drawers. We had them in our last home and loved them.

[JimD]

The lower cabinets we got when we had our house built were almost all doors in the lower cabinets. I quickly changed the island to pull out shelves made of melamine with 1/4 thick oak edges about 2 inches wide covering the edge of the melamine. They were better than getting down on your knees to get anything out of the cabinet. Now we have a new island with all drawers. I think they are better than the pull out shelves but then they are all me instead of me trying to fix up what the trim carpenter did.

My drawers have 3/4 cherry drawer fronts dovetailed directly to 1/2 baltic birch plywood sides. The big drawers have 1/2 bb drawer bottoms too. I wondered about fastening the solid wood to the plywood directly but I put the same water based lacquer on everything (Resisthane) and it has been fine so far. I have one drawer more than 12 inches wide. Putting a false drawer front onto a plywood box would be a better idea from a wood movement standpoint.

I also did not use metal drawer slides because LOML and I wanted the maximum amount of space possible. I made the island like a dresser with the drawers bottoms sliding on wooden dividers. They do not move quite as easily as they would with drawer slides but we are happy with the choice.

Jim

[drumpriest]

First off thanks for all of the responses guys. LOML is pretty sold on drawers now, thanks. I figured that'd be the way to go. my only issue with the drawer front is that I did not intend to use frame and panel construction for the drawer front. Mainly because I am not planning on solid wood panels for my door panels. I'm planning to do Bird's eye maple veneered panels. (I'll veneer em myself). The issue is that the panel back won't be flush with the back of the rails and stiles. I could probably come fairly close, but doubt that I could dial in the perfect thickness of substrate/veneer, and position for the groove to make that happen.

So my drawer fronts would probably be solid wood glue ups. This seems like an ok idea if I have dividers for the drawers, though honestly I was hoping to avoid dividers, as they are just a waste of space.

[cabinetman]

First off thanks for all of the responses guys. LOML is pretty sold on drawers now, thanks. I figured that'd be the way to go. my only issue with the drawer front is that I did not intend to use frame and panel construction for the drawer front. Mainly because I am not planning on solid wood panels for my door panels. I'm planning to do Bird's eye maple veneered panels. (I'll veneer em myself). The issue is that the panel back won't be flush with the back of the rails and stiles. I could probably come fairly close, but doubt that I could dial in the perfect thickness of substrate/veneer, and position for the groove to make that happen.

So my drawer fronts would probably be solid wood glue ups. This seems like an ok idea if I have dividers for the drawers, though honestly I was hoping to avoid dividers, as they are just a waste of space.

I'm confused as to the question(s)/statements in this post.

At first it seemed that the question was concerning drawers or pull outs.

Along with that it seemed that whether a wide drawer front was a concern, not a wide drawer.

Since it wasn't stated until after many replies that solid wood panels were not planned, but rather a veneer on a substrate will be the plan, and a frame and panel was not intended for the doors, or drawer fronts. That would have been nice to know from the start.

Then further into the post, the concern for having the back of the panel flush with the rails and stiles was the problem to not use a R&S fabrication. There are a few ways to do a R&S door with a solid panel and have it flush to the frame. If it is shy of the depth of the frame is not a problem for doors or drawer fronts. On doors, the back side of the panel could be flat, or have its own cove similar to the front. On drawers, the back side is not usually seen and most of it is covered by the front of the drawer box. I don't see what the problem is with that.

But, since it is now revealed that the doors and drawer fronts will be veneered substrate, changes the thinking process to what will be the design of the doors and drawer fronts. It's still unclear and unsaid. Are they going to be slab doors and drawer fronts with a solid wood edge, or some other design. It's difficult to address the issues without all the information. When giving a suggestion to an unintended procedure can be frustrating when the issue continues to change with further information.

So, now that it has been explained that the doors and drawer fronts will be veneer over substrate, there is a mention of solid wood glue ups. So, I'm further confused. If they will be a veneered substrate, a R&S frame can be made with a glass door bit, making a rabbet for the panel. There are many options for the sizes. Or, a frame can be made with separate profiles for the stock, and lock miter corners, with a rabbet on the back edge for the panel to finish flush with the frame. The panel can be glued in (if veneered substrate), or pin nailed.

And then finally, suggesting that the drawer fronts are solid wood glue ups, confuses the issue that it was stated that they would be veneer over substrate. Along with that information it was brought up about dividers for drawers. Now, does that mean dividers between drawers, which could also mean smaller drawers and drawer fronts? Or does it mean dividers inside the drawers? Maybe you could clear up some details so that they might be more specifically addressed in detail.
.