Friday, April 18, 2008

Transforming the Kitchen: Roll-Out Shelves

pull-out shelves holding pots and food stroage containers

Want to make the most of your closet space, and also make it easy to get to things at the back of those low cabinets? Installing pull-out shelves might be a good option.

The Shelf Conversions exhibit at the NAPO conference was impressive; it's a bit hard to see well, but with this ingenious arrangement, when you pull out the one shelf, you can pull over the shelf from that hard-to-reach corner.

These glide-out shelves are custom-built (in the U.S.), so they can be built to work around your pipes. And they can be built to store serving platters, pot lids, or almost anything else. (See photo below.) My fellow organizer Monica Ricci has spoken highly of Shelf Conversions, and I trust her opinion.

Update on Oct. 16, 2009: It seems that Shelf Conversions makes the Glide-Out shelving sold through ShelfGenie franchises. The link above, to shelfconversions.com, now redirects to shelfgenie.com. But there are some Shelf Conversions dealers who are not yet ShelfGenie franchisees.

glide-out shelves holding cleaning supplies, ziplock bags, serving platters, and more

But of course, there are many other options, and alternatives suited to many different budgets. Here are just a few.


roll-out shelf holding what seem to be tall canisters

Rev-A-Shelf is a name I've known for years.


pull-out cabinet shelves holding pots and pans

Rolling Shelves, not surprisingly, makes rolling shelves.

If you are handy, you could make your own pull-out shelf; This Old House tells you how to do that.


pull-out organizer holding pots

And to get some of the same benefits, you could install pull-out cabinet organizers, made by companies such as Simplehuman , Rubbermaid and Whitney Design.

2 comments:

Michele said...

I love that you included a DIY link. This would be especially useful for odd size cabinets sometimes found in older homes. We just redid our kitchen and got everything from Ikea. They have slide out baskets and other fittings for their cabinets, and it is all pretty reasonably priced.

Jeri Dansky said...

Michele, thank you for reminding me about Ikea. As someone who doesn't deal well with their stores, I tend to overlook them - but I know Ikea works well for many others people.

And now that you've pointed it out, I've found the pull-out baskets and other fittings.