We put in a Omega National KitchenMate Blind Corner Caddy (Solid Maple) blind corner system. Click on the images below to make them larger. My wife really likes it!! No more digging in the back of the cabinet!

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First, they are expensive. Most of the units I looked at were well over $500. Lee Valley's may be cheaper, but on average they were $700 and $800.

Second, I found that a lot of them had so much wasted space. For instance the longest unit still left about 7" dead space at the back of my cabinet - and a bunch more dead space on each side. I just couldn't swallow it for that money.

What I ended up doing: having my cabinet maker build roll outs inside the blind cabinet - it will be a 21" door there - and leaving the blind corner as is for things I may pull out once a year or less.

Flat out closing in the space and putting a drawer base there is an option. I encountered folks here who did that when I was asking about this. Who knows, maybe in the end I will have wished I'd done that, but it was hard to swallow totally throwing away that space too.

Scottdim thanks for the pictures. I was having a hard time imagining how to use a pull out. I will be keeping this in mind.

Needsometips08 losing space by putting in the drawers is what bothers me. I really would like more base draw space right now I will only have one cab with drawers so having extras drawers would be a bonus.

Need to make a decision soon one of many. Who would have thought a kitchen redo would drive me crazy.

Thanks again for your comments. Would love to hear from others.

MadamG2U

Writersblock thanks so much for the link. Its more within my budget and will stay on my radar.
MadamG2U

I have the Lee Valley unit in one of our corner base cabs -- I don't like it b/c it keeps getting messed up and DH has to fix it. We've had it 2 years and I think it gets messed up about every 2 months or so. Mainly I put stuff on it that I rarely need.

needsometips08 has a great idea w/roll-outs for the dead space in back -- wish we'd thought of that :-)

We have the Lee Valley unit in ours, works great. Doesn't utilize all of the space but better than a lazy suzan.

Do you have to have a blind corner? What about a super/lazy susan? Susans are very useful...they allow you to have access to everything in them in front (b/c you turn it to bring what you want to the front). My KD strongly discouraged us when we briefly considered a blind corner cabinet...she had had many complaints about them from clients who insisted on one. If something falls off, you cannot even close it until someone crawls inside to retrieve the item that fell. She also said they don't work as well as they look like they would.

In our old kitchen, the back & side walls of our lazy susan followed the contour of the shelves so closely that nothing could possibly fall off...there was just enough space to allow the shelves to rotate (maybe 1/8" or less). I loved that cabinet! It held all our pots, pans, cake pans, pizza pans, colanders, & serving pieces. It held, IMHO, an amazing amount of stuff given it's size. Others here use susans for small appliances...that was my plan until my DH usurped it for a Pet Center! (The corner was open & we ended up putting a 27" cabinet turned 90o in the corner that now holds all things pet-related...food, treats, leashes, meds, etc.)

Could you post your layout and see if we can work up something different?

As to cost, I suspect you get what you pay for...

I used diagonal corners and would not do that again. I hated lazy susans. I've had them. I knew what needsometips08 had done from previous threads and I wish now I would have done that. And the diagonal uppers are a nightmare worse than blind corners. Live and learn.

Thanks all for you advise and wisdom. I will be taking everything into consideration.

Buehl my scanner died a few days ago so I can't post a sketch. Maybe I can talk everyone thru it. I have a brownstone and my kitchen is an addon. It is approx. 10x12. The stove and sink are on a outer wall. On the opposite outer wall (backyard wall) will be the dishwasher and on the wall next to the building will be the fridge. The fourth wall will have nothing because of doorway to enter the kitchen and right opposite that is the doorway to go into the backyard.

So..we are going to put the dishwasher next to the backyard door, then the blind corner cab. next to that will be a 36" base sink cab, then the stove, then another corner cab, a 9" base cab and then the fride, thus U shapped.

Does that make sence hope you can picture it. I am also putting 42" wall cabs with molding. One wall cab will be a corner cab with glass door.

Thanks again everyone.

MadamG2U

Do you have a digital camera? If so, take a picture of the sketch, download it to your computer, upload it to your photo-hosting site (e.g., Photobucket), and post it here...

(You can also do this with a film camera, but you'll need to take the film in for processing and ask for your pics on disk or similar to get the electronic version of they pic.)

Here is a link that might be useful: Read Me If You're New To GW Kitchens!

Is it something like this?

Thats exactly it! Just thought wish I could take a picture but my camera is currently on vacation at Disney with my brother and family and then I see this. Buehl you are amazing!

The door to enter the kitchen is right next to the fridge and nothing large can go against the free wall.

I see the blind cabinet as the lost space and not sure what to do with it.

What do you think?

MadamG2U

Are the exterior doors & windows finalized?

Are the interior doors & windows finalized?

If not, I have an idea that will use more of the space for the kitchen and give you more counter & work space.... But first...

Do I have the window & door spacing correct?

I.e., is the backyard door about 12" from the top wall?

Is the window about 24" from the right wall? Can it be moved?

How wide is the window? 36"? 48"? Something else?

Also, you say nothing can fit on the top wall? Why couldn't the entry to the rest of the house be made about 24" smaller so you could do something like this...

OR, expand it so it's the full length and have the refrigerator in the doorway...that would gain you at least another 4.5" and you could do something like this...

If the window cannot be changed, then what about one of these...

We have a blind corner, next to our stove. We've decided to close it off. Instead we're putting 30" drawers for our baking stuff, and colindars. The space we're getting out of the drawers, and what we want to put in them, makes more sense (to us) than the type of things we would be able to put onto a blind corner unit, and the associated space that always gets left out. We think we'd get about the same amount of storage, without the expense of the unit, and the hassle of things falling off. At least, that's the logic - hope we're right! Took us a while to get our head around that, that's for sure.

Happy Easter everyone!

Nothing can be moved the window is small on the backyard wall. So I am kind of stuck with the space.

Buehl thanks for the suggestions how I wish I could use one of them. I spent some time in there this morning trying to figure out if cabs/applicances can be moved alass nope. Buehl your initial layout is it in a nutshell. I'll make it work and know in the end I will be happy. Believe it or not with that set up I am getting more counter space than I had before.

MadamG2U

I measured the room and it is 124" x 128" if that helps any.

MadamG2U

Bumping for Buehl

MadamG2U

buehl's last two layouts do not include moving doors or windows. Why won't those work?

Good morning

The door to go into the diningroom is where Buehl has the fridge.

MadamG2U

Is that another doorway then? (I was also wondering the same thing!)

Where does the top doorway lead then? Could you incorporate them both into one to give you more "wall" space?

I have a blind corner cabinet similar to scottdim's except there is not storage on the door itself, there is a sort of swing out lazy suzan attatched to the cabinet itself, allowing access to the sliding shelves in the corner. I also have a super suzan in the other corner (it too is a small, u shaped kitchen).

If you can configure a super suzan instead of the blind corner cabinet that would get my vote. You can store stuff in the blind corner but it is more of a get down on the floor and tug on something endeavor.

If you can't get anymore drawers fit in the kitchen maybe you could consider hanging frequently used items on the wall. We have a vacation home with only three 12" drawers (and no closets in the entire place!) and using wall space is very helpful. It's a more of a casual atmosphere but very practical.

Hi Buehl

Take away the door on the far wall its all wall 2 doorways: 1. where you have the fridge and the other you have correct.

skyedog I'm really thinking of giving up the lost space and having 3 drawers put into it.

And to think I made myself crazy picking out floor tiles.

MadamG2U

Can that doorway be changed/moved along that wall?

theanimala - What tile did you use for your backsplash?

We used the LeMans corner fixture from Hafele. It is very well-made, very smooth, and very cool, the way the two peanut-shaped shelves smoothly articulate out from hiding.

The advantage is that by swinging the shelves completely out and away from the cabinet, everything is very accessible from the top - no bending over and reaching to the back of the shelves like on a susan. On the down side, there is a LOT of wasted space, and it was expensive.

Still, it's one of the things we like to show off.

No the doors can't be moved. It is what it is.

MadamG2U

So, is this what it really looks like? No space b/w the range & sink? Is that even safe?

+++++++++++

I'm thinking a single-bowl sink in a 27" sink base plus a 33" corner susan would be better...at least you would have 12" b/w the sink & range then.

Do you have a pantry elsewhere? Your storage is very limited. Could you fit a 12" deep pantry on the north wall? Even if it were only 30" or so wide, it would add significant storage space.

Something like this...

Hi. I have the Lee Valley blind corner unit, and we love it. It was a bit pricey, but we have never regretted it. It has never had a mechanical problem, like someone else here was complaining about.

Here are reasons I think you should get a blind corner unit for your space, MadamG2U: For certain spaces, it's the only way to make the most use of that area. (Like the photos for theanimala above, and your design drawings, sometimes a Lazy Susan is not suitable for the space).

Sure, you could do drawers, but you're still wasting space. If you are limited in storage and space, like you seem to be, this seems like a huge reason to use a blind corner unit. While it may be somewhat expensive, so are drawers or anything else, AND I think it's such a cool feature, that when you go to sell your home, believe me, it will look like a clever thing to a potential buyer. To me it would be a sign that the seller thought carefully about the best use of space in a kitchen where space is at a premium. The units really are clever. If you organize well and stay somewhat neat, I don't believe you'll have a problem with stuff falling. I never have, and we have kids. They love this thing too.

Would I rather have a bunch of drawers, or maybe even a cool Lazy Susan? Sure, but for my particular corner, and it looks like yours too, this was the best and just about only solution. Good luck.

Good morning Buehl, that is the layout. Spoke with the cabinet maker yesterday and he thinks a 36" blind base cab would work better. He is also going to put a lazy susan in the regular base cab and some kind of pull out in the blind cab. I mentioned to him about making the blind cab a three draw cab didn't go over very well.

Storage - yes I do. Some background my home is over 100 years (brownstone) and what started out as a small leak has blossomed into changing out the pipes, updating electrical and the big one...

Finding out that my kitchen was built on dirt. So the kitchen was torn down and rebuilt. The GC added inches width and length and made the ceiling higher. But because of the backyard and the basement entrance from out side he could not make it much larger. Diningroom door couldn't be changed so to give me more counter space/room we decided to put in a regular door instead of the over large pation side door that I had.

Basicly my entire first floor has been gutted and redone. Since I have room in the diningroom he has built a pantry closet as well as a broom closet. On the north wall I am planning to repurpose a cabinet I used to have in the bathroom. By the way that was gutted too and he is putting in a wall to wall closet.

If you have hung in this far thanks so much for reading

hmsweethm reread your post and I see exactly where you are coming from. I am going to show the cabinet maker and the GC the Lee Valley site and see if he can either do something similar or if budget allows this is something I can get and one of them can install. Believe it or not my counter space and storage space in the new kitchen has doubled. Thanks again.

MadamG2U

We decided to access one of our blind corners from the room behind it. It will be a storage unit within a closet, accessible via a bin on a track or something of the sort. We just could not rationalize two lazy susans in a G-shaped kitchen.

The third corner will be accessed from the outside of the peninsula on the short arm of the G.

I have a blind corner cabinet w/ just shelves. Awful, retrieving stuff is an archeological dig. I've used blind corner cabinets with susans and with Rev-A-Shelf pull/swivel shelves. Better but not much, kind of fiddly too.

My solution is to eliminate blind corners in my tentative layout. If all the blind corner does is link to a short bit of ''L'' before the range, then nixing that ''L'' actually gains me usable space, since the conventional drawers in the resulting straight run of base cabinet are more used and accessible than a blind corner can ever be. That is my peculiar way of thinking, anyway.

This is an endless debate, and a lot of the answer has to do with how much space you really have available. I agree that blind corners are annoying, but when a blind corner can double your base cabinet space, it's worth it. I used to live in a place where there was one 18" base cab, stove, and another 18" cab with the empty corner where a blind corner could have been.

Now, if there'd been room for even a 24" drawer base, that would have been better, but a blind corner cab does have more space in it than an 18" drawer base, which is all I could have fit there. I wouldn't have hesitated to go for the corner. Inconvenient storage is better than none, when that's what it boils down to.

I have to second johnliu. I discarded all the designer layouts that had a U or G shaped layout in my 9x12 kitchen in favor of a galley style. 2 corner cabinets would be almost useless in my space and I actually gained more usable space by eliminating some cabinetry! (Now I can only hope the future buyers feel the same way.)

I like the U layout in our kitchen, I just haven't been happy w/the LV unit that folks hype so much. I think it's probably worth spending more $ and getting something nicer. Here's what my LV looks like:

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Mine is attached to the door, so you pull the door out to access the first shelves. This feature works fine except that the door would never stay completely closed due to the weight of the shelves etc. on the door (I guess...) so DH put a magnet to hold it closed. Then you swing the door to the right to pull the back shelves forward. This is the part that is such a huge PITA. It's never a gentle swing, and the mechanism often gets jammed (or something) and needs to be looked at. Maybe we just got a dud!

The unit posted byt theanimala seems like a nicer unit than mine. The LeMan's blind corner unit also seems pretty nice, no elbow-joint thingy to get jammed! Good luck with your kitchen!

Thanks so much all of you for your replies and suggestions. The way I see it (at least today) this kitchen is 100xs better than what I had and one way or another I'll make it work

MadamG2U