Easy-Build Kitchen Roll-outs
Build roll-out shelves to make everything in your cupboards instantly accessible
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Rollouts make accessing cabinet contents back-friendly and frustration free. If your cabinets don’t have rollout shelves, don’t despair. In this feature, we show you how to retrofit nearly any cabinet. You can build a pair of shelves in a morning for about $180.
What timber products to buy
Our roll-out drawers are made entirely of 12mm hoop pine plywood. This is favoured by cabinetmakers because it’s ‘void free’, meaning that the thin veneers of the plywood core are solid. Therefore, sanded edges will look smooth and attractive. If your hardware store doesn’t stock hoop pine plywood, you can find it at Mister Ply & Wood. Hoop pine plywood may not even be labelled as such at the timber yard or hardware store, but it’s easy to recognise by comparing it with other softwood plywood in the racks. Hoop pine will have more, and thinner, laminations in the plywood core, and the face will be free of imperfections. It costs $128 a sheet for BB grade. If you choose, you can make the sides of the shelves from any 90 x 18mm solid timber that matches your cabinets, then finish it to match (use plywood for the bases). But if you use 18mm material for the sides, subtract 75mm from the opening to size the shelves (not 60mm, as we describe in Photo 2). (Refer to ‘Building Rollouts in Cabinets with Centre Dividers’, for an example.)
What does it all mean?
Drawer Slides A mechanism fitted to the side or bottom of a drawer, allowing the drawer to be pulled out of the cupboard.
Builder's Square An L-shaped ruler set at a 90° angle. Usually 600mm-long on one arm and 400mm-long on the other.
STEP 1
Open the cabinet doors to their widest point and then measure the narrowest part of the cabinet opening (usually at the hinges).
STEP 2
Rip 12mm plywood down to 90mm wide and cut two 500mm lengths (drawer sides) and two more to the measured width minus 60mm (drawer front and back (Diagram 1).
STEP 3
Clamp or screw two straight 600 x 90 x 45mm pieces of timber to the corner of a flat surface to use as an assembly jig. Use a carpenter’s square to ensure accuracy. Leave a 50mm gap at the corner.
STEP 4
Spread woodworking glue on the ends and clamp a drawer side and front in place, then pin the corner together with three 30mm brads. Repeat for the other three corners.
STEP 5
Cut a 12mm plywood base to size. Apply a thin bead of glue to the bottom edges, and nail one edge of the plywood flush with a side, spacing nails every 100mm. Then push the frame against the jig to square it and nail the other three edges.
STEP 6
Separate the drawer slides and space the drawer part 6mm up from the base. Hold it flush to the front and screw it to the rollout side.
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