It’s always a pain to try and get something from the back of a shelf in the kitchen. But luckily, there’s a simple solution.
Try adding roll-out cabinets to your kitchen.
How often have you been in the middle of cooking and unable to find an important spice because it was all the way at the back of your shelf?
With Ana White’s simple yet effective solution, you never have to struggle to find what’s at the back of the shelf again!
And the best part is that this hack is super cheap, costing only around $10.
Firstly, you need to assemble your tools and materials. You need a saw, a drill, a 22-inch draw slide, a two-foot level, and a tape measure.
For face frame cabinets, you also need shim material (wooden blocks and some screws).
Start by removing the shelf you want to convert. Depending on the shelf, it may need unscrewing, or it could just lift out.
If you have a face frame cabinet, you need to measure the distance between the cabinet wall and the frame.
Then you need to add shims that will make up the space between the face frame and the wall at the front and back of either side of the cabinet.
If you need to do this, add the shims to the cabinet side walls with screws (make sure the screws are smaller than the cabinet wall and shim material when stacked together).
You should need only two screws per shim. Make sure they’re level.
Then, if you are using shims, measure the width of the cabinet opening. Then measure the shelf.
The shelf needs to be small enough to roll out of the cabinet door, meaning that it needs to be sawed down to just a little smaller than the size of the cabinet opening.
So measure the shelf and saw the width so that it’s ever so slightly smaller than the cabinet opening when the sliders are attached.
(The slider wheels will add to the width of the shelf just a little, so make sure you account for them when cutting down the shelf. Standard slider wheels will add an inch of width to the shelf when attached.)
Then mark the location that you want the shelf to stand at on the shims or the wall of the cabinet if you aren’t using shims.
Use a level to do this.
Then open your draw slides (one set costs around $7).
Then screw the drawer members onto the sides of the width of the shelf.
After that, attach the wall members of the slides to the cabinet walls or shims, with the wheels facing down.
Screw into the marks you made with the level.
All you need to do then is place the shelf’s drawer members into the wall members. The shelf should slide in easily.
If you want to make the shelf even better, then you can use the piece of wood that you sawed off to stop items falling off as you roll the shelf out.
You make this just by holding the end of the shelf over the wood and screwing it into the wood to make a lip.
At first glance, this hack may seem tricky. But really, anyone can do it.
The trickiest part is sawing down the shelves to make them fit into your cabinet. But as long as you take your time and measure carefully, it shouldn’t be too challenging.
And if you get confused at any point, you can always refer back to the video below!
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