Pull out shelves changed my life—and pull out drawers for cabinets will change yours, too!
10 Tips for Installing Pull Out Pantry Shelves
1
/
10
Pick the Right Sides for the Job
Building a slew of identical drawer boxes is easier, but having a variety gives you more versatility. Think about what you’re going to store in your pull out pantry shelves and build the boxes to suit your needs.
Sloping sides
Rollout drawers with sloping sides keep tall things stable yet still let you see all the way to the back of the shelf. These are good for nesting pots and pans or storing different-size items on the same shelf.
Low sides
Lower sides (3 in. is typical) work well for smaller items such as canned goods and spices. The low sides make reading labels easier.
High sides
Shelves with higher sides all around (6 in. tall rather than the typical 3 in.) are ideal for tippy plastic storage containers or stacks of plates.
2
/
10
Use the Right Slides
There are a dozen kinds of drawer slides out there, but if you want to keep shopping and installation simple, stick to these two types:
Roller slides glide on plastic wheels. They’re inexpensive, a cinch to install (it takes about two minutes) and nearly impossible to screw up. You’ll find them at home centers under various names including side mount, under mount and bottom mount.
Most are rated to carry 35 to 100 lbs. For heavy-duty rollouts holding items such as canned goods, use slides rated for at least 100 lbs. The big disadvantage: Most roller slides extend only three-quarters of their length—the back of the drawer stays in the cabinet.
Ball-bearing slides glide on tiny bearings. The big advantage of these slides is that they extend fully, giving you complete access to everything in the drawer. They’re about three times the cost of roller slides, and they’re usually rated to carry 75 to 100 lbs., but you can get 200-lb. versions if you need them. The big disadvantage: They’re fussy to install. If your drawer is a hair too big or small, these slides won’t glide.
Tip: Make drawer boxes about 1/32 in. smaller than you need. It’s easy to shim behind a slide with layers of masking tape to make up for a too-small drawer. It’s a lot harder to deal with a drawer that’s too wide.
3
/
10
Make the Most of Skinny Spaces
In a small kitchen with little storage space, you can make even narrow filler spaces work harder by installing a vertical pegboard rollout.
Kitchen designer Mary Jane Pappas typically recommends 18- to 30-in.-wide rollout drawers for cabinets: “Any larger and they’re too clumsy. Any smaller and too much of the space is used by the rollouts themselves.”
But there is one type of rollout that makes good use of narrow spaces, even those only 3 to 6 in. wide. Pappas says that pull out pantry shelves—single tall, narrow drawers with long, shelves, drawers, baskets or even pegboard—can be an efficient way to put skinny spaces to work.
4
/
10
Start at the Bottom
The most useful pull out pantry shelves and drawers are the ones closest to the floor since these eliminate the most awkward bending and crouching. If want to limit your time and money investment, you’ll get the most bang for your buck by retrofitting these areas first.
5
/
10
Store-Bought Rollouts—What to Look For
You can spend as little as $10 for a simple wire rollout basket or as much as $100. So what’s the difference?
Look for rollouts with quality hardware. Second-rate slides and rollers can sag or seize up under sacks of flour and pots and pans. Examine the slides to check whether they’re roller slides (which extend only three-quarters of their length) or ball-bearing (which extend fully). Ball-bearing slides tend to support heavier items and roll more smoothly.
Choose sturdy, chrome-plated steel rollouts for heavier items. Steel rollouts come in different gauge metals. Before ordering online, shop around at different retailers so you can physically compare the weight and density of the steel used by different manufacturers.
Epoxy-coated wire rollouts and plastic inserts work fine for light-duty items, but they have a tendency to crack, bend and scratch if packed with heavy loads like canned goods.
6
/
10
Watch for Obstacles
Every cabinetmaker has a story about pull-out pantry shelves that couldn’t roll out because they were colliding with something. When you’re measuring for the spacer width, watch out for protruding hinges and doors that don’t open fully or that protrude into the cabinet opening.
7
/
10
Avoid Mistakes With a Story Stick
The most obvious way to size rollout parts is to measure the opening of the cabinet and then do the math. But that’s a recipe for mistakes because it’s easy to forget to subtract one of the components (like the width of the slides or the drawers) from the overall measurement.
So try this: Forget the math and mark your measurements on a piece of scrap wood. It’s a great visual aid that helps you prevent mistakes and having to walk between your kitchen and your shop constantly to double-check measurements.
8
/
10
Divide Up Wide Spaces
If the cabinet is more than 30 in. wide, consider installing two narrower rollouts side by side rather than a single wide one. This means some extra building work and buying more slides, but the smaller rollouts will operate more smoothly and easily. Wider shelves and drawers tend to bind or rack as you slide them in and out.
Success story:
My daughter called her pantry “the black hole” because she could never find what she needed on the deep shelves. I replaced the five full-width shelves with two six-drawer stacks of sturdy full-extension drawers supported by interior center panels.
We spaced the drawers carefully for the types of items she planned to store. Finishing touches include soft-close dampers on the drawers and iron-on edge-banding for the birch plywood panels.
Jim Wagener, Ashfield, Massachusetts
9
/
10
Baltic Birch is Best
Cabinetmakers love Baltic birch plywood for rollouts because the edges look great. Unlike standard hardwood plywood, Baltic birch never has voids in the inner core. It may not be labeled “Baltic birch” at home centers, but you’ll be able to identify it by comparing it with other hardwood plywood in the racks. It’ll have more and thinner laminations in the plywood core.
The biggest disadvantages of using Baltic birch are that it costs more than standard hardwood plywood and can be harder to find. If your home center doesn’t carry it, try a traditional lumberyard.
10
/
10
Keep Drawer Boxes Simple
Rollout box parts
All the drawer boxes in my shop are super simple: butt-joint corners and glued-on bottoms. No rabbets, dadoes or dovetails. They don’t look very impressive, but they’ve held up for years. So I built my kitchen rollouts the same way. If simple boxes can carry tools and hardware, I figure they can stand up to kitchen use, too.
Gary Wentz, Senior Editor
Field editor tip:
Consider having drawer boxes made to your exact specs and then install them yourself. The average cost of a solid maple, dovetailed single drawer that we order is about $35. Compared with buying material and finishing it yourself—not to mention the dovetail joints—you can’t beat it. And it looks much nicer.
Steve Zubik, NestWoodworking, Northfield, Minnesota
