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michelledt

Corner Cabinets/Dead Corners - What Did U Do?

MichelleDT
11 years ago

Just got back the first set of plans from KD 1. The solution for the corner cabinets was strange. Two doors opening into each other if that makes sense.

How did you deal with corner cabs? I thought I had clipped a few examples of hinged "single door" corner solutions but can't find them. Pics would be helpful to show KD 1 what I want.

They are had two "dead corners" on the plan. I am hoping there are creative solutions for dead corners too. These are custom cabs so there must be other alternatives.

Thanks for the help!

M

PS. Meeting with KD 2 today so hopefully better solutions.

Comments (45)

  • slonewby
    11 years ago

    We have a corner pull out lazy susan in one dead corner and just a deep, difficult cabinet in the other. I wanted the deep, difficult cabinet as I store gifts and wrapping paper in there and it just works. As for the lazy susan......not sure if they're worth the price. Sure, they enable you to access what's in that cabinet better...but you lose a WHOLE lot of useable cabinet space in doing so. The wedge shape pull outs are interesting to fit things one.

    I put rarely used items in there so I don't have to deal with it too often.

  • northcarolina
    11 years ago

    I have a 36" lazy susan cabinet but it is not what slonewby posted -- it's the big round turntables with the cutout for the door. It's next to the stove and I can get (and get to) an enormous amount of stuff in there.

    I'll link the susans that we used. It's an Ikea cabinet but we used these instead of the Ikea version inside.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Omega kidney shelf at Hardware Hut

  • Jumpilotmdm
    11 years ago

    2 dead corners in a custom kitchen? VERY unusual.

  • marcolo
    11 years ago

    In every discussion of lazy susans, I find that everybody uses the term differently and so the recommendations get confusing.

    In two kitchens, I have had the kind of susan that northcarolina seems to be describing.


    There is no waste of usable space, nothing can fall off, nothing is in the way, and they are fantastic for storing pots and pans next to the range. You push in the door, it rotates into the cabinet, and the attached pie-cut shelves rotate out of the cabinet, putting your stuff right in front of you. No trouble accessing lower shelf at all. Mine projects a total of 36" from each wall (not cabinet edge) and takes up 12" alongside the face of each cabinet run.

    You can also gussy them up with a Korner King in various configurations.

    I do not like the Super Susans because the double-hinged door swings out and bangs into the neighboring cabinets.


    Plus it seems much less efficient to me.

    pllog swears by her corner drawers.

    Someone here (kaismom maybe?) adores kidney-shaped blind corner drawers. They have the funny shape to maximize shelf space while also allowing you to go through the gyrations needed to pull them out.

    {{!gwi}}

  • marcolo
    11 years ago

    The forum is becoming unusable beyond belief. They keep fiddling with picture-posting nonsense while opening a huge sewer of advertising on users. All of the photos I posted have been posted here before, and some even came from GW. I guess monkeys must be cheap in programming.

    Please google for the things I posted--they're useful.

  • modern_mom35
    11 years ago

    we are doing corner drawers with access built into our sink cabinet so one of the "dead spaces" on the side of the drawer can be reached.

  • Circus Peanut
    11 years ago

    I personally loathe cabinet corners, so I smacked a prep sink right in there, just to teach mine a lesson. It's got extra deep space next to the plumbing where we keep the deep stockpot, as it turns out.

  • mjsee
    11 years ago

    We are doing blind corner Hafele thingy in one corner...and a lazy susan in the other. And for the upper with (what would be) a blind corner we are doing an "easy reach" cabinet. So it's not a blind corner.

  • athomeinvagw
    11 years ago

    Maybe I have what your cabinet maker is thinking of? Is this what you mean by two doors opening into themselves:

    {{!gwi}}

    {{!gwi}}

  • angie_diy
    11 years ago

    Marcolo,

    It seems the problem may be missing quotes in your html source. That is, you wrote things like:

    The quotes surrounding the URL of the source are missing, i.e., should be written thus, e.g.:

    I will repost your message after this one.

  • angie_diy
    11 years ago

    The following was penned by Marcolo, not I:

    -------------------------

    In every discussion of lazy susans, I find that everybody uses the term differently and so the recommendations get confusing.

    In two kitchens, I have had the kind of susan that northcarolina seems to be describing.


    There is no waste of usable space, nothing can fall off, nothing is in the way, and they are fantastic for storing pots and pans next to the range. You push in the door, it rotates into the cabinet, and the attached pie-cut shelves rotate out of the cabinet, putting your stuff right in front of you. No trouble accessing lower shelf at all. Mine projects a total of 36" from each wall (not cabinet edge) and takes up 12" alongside the face of each cabinet run.

    You can also gussy them up with a Korner King in various configurations.

    I do not like the Super Susans because the double-hinged door swings out and bangs into the neighboring cabinets.


    Plus it seems much less efficient to me.

    plllog swears by her corner drawers.

    Someone here (kaismom maybe?) adores kidney-shaped blind corner drawers. They have the funny shape to maximize shelf space while also allowing you to go through the gyrations needed to pull them out.

    {{!gwi}}

  • marcolo
    11 years ago

    OMG thank you, Angie. That was very kind of you! I never use the quotes to post pictures here, but it seems the site has been playacting at changing the photo rules.

  • CEFreeman
    11 years ago

    Hasn't this thread been resurrected about a gudzillion times?
    I even recognize the same pics -- which are good, but again?

    Angie, I'm surprised your demo with " didn't cause a photo.
    It's basic HTML. They do keep jerking us around, though. Anything to throw an ad in our faces.

    I have a lazy Susan (1st pic) which I love but have always found those plllog drawers to be fascinating!

  • auroraborelis
    11 years ago

    A question for everybody - what do you store in your corner cabinet?

    I have a lazy susan at the moment, and I don't find it be very useful. I have large enough kitchen that I don't to store food in there, and what I find myself needing is more drawers, and more storage for large kitchen gizmos/appliances (which I suppose may go in the pantry in the new house...

  • remodelfla
    11 years ago

    I store all my small appliances in my lazy susan. Food processor, crock pot, mandolin, blades, hand mixer, immersion blender, and several more that escape my mind right now. So easy to get to and I find it very utility.

  • loves2cook4six
    11 years ago

    I have Magic Corner II units and store small appliances on them.

    Open

    Closed

    Also IIRC someone on here created there own slide out drawers attached on rails running through the width of the cabinet on the bottom for the inner draws and on the side for the pullout draws.

  • desertsteph
    11 years ago

    here's a few other options-

    this in an inside view of the one above -

    I love plllg's corner drawers

    are either of yours accessible from another room / side?

    I'm leaving my corner dead

  • Buehl
    11 years ago

    I had a "lazy" susan in my old kitchen and it held all my pots & pans, cake pans & pie tins, colanders, and several serving pieces. It held a lot of stuff! I really wanted one in my new kitchen to store all my small appliances, but it was co-opted as a "Pet Center" instead. (Now all my small appliances are taking up valuable shelf space in my small pantry.)

    I really liked the fact that whatever I needed was always out in front...just rotate until the item was in front of you and just reach down to pick it up - no reaching deep inside or getting on your hands & knees to get at items.

    Our lazy susan was like the one Marcolo has...with the center pole. We also had the doors attached that rotated into the cabinet and the walls of our corner susan cabinet followed the contour of the shelves so closely that I don't think anything larger than a grain of salt or maybe grain of rice could fall off! I agree - I like them better than a "super" susan - but I think both offer great storage options.

    I found it great use of corner space!

    Blind corner cabinets, OTOH, I find to be far less useful even if they have an insert that swings out. If something falls off one of the swinging shelves, you have to crawl inside to retrieve it b/f you can swing the insert back in - not something I want to do as I get older! (Small children are great for this, btw!) My MIL has blind corners in both her upper and base cabinets - and she doesn't use them past the part that opens in front of her.


    Our other corner is a corner prep sink - in our case perfectly situated to make our kitchen super-functional.

  • Buehl
    11 years ago

    I should have mentioned that our Pet Center is a 27" cabinet turned 90 degrees so it faces outside the kitchen. This allows full use of all the space.

  • sochi
    11 years ago

    Great suggestions here. This is not useful for most with dead corners I know, but we put a wine fridge in our dead corner, and we access it from the other side of the peninsula. Obviously this doesn't work if you have a wall behind your dead corner, but for those with a similar lay out, it avoids the awkward dead corner cabs altogether.

    You can see the wine fridge in this picture (obviously it need not be a wine fridge, but I wanted something useful that would be accessed relatively infrequently).

    The corner on the other side.

  • deedles
    11 years ago

    I think I'm giving up the corner for two wider base cabinets on either side. We are going to use the space for storage on the porch side of the kitchen, though.

  • lwerner
    11 years ago

    Hijacking the thread a bit...

    > It's basic HTML. They do keep jerking us around, though. Anything to throw an ad in our faces.

    I have AdBlock installed so I don't see the ads*. But I do feel sort of guilty because this site is a wonderful resource and I'm not supporting it. Somewhere on the site I remember it said you could upgrade to a paid membership to avoid the ads. I tried, and the links were broken and wouldn't let me do anything. Does anyone know how to make that work?

    Laura

    * I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I have AdBlock installed because I'm part of the ads engineering team at work. I don't mind the ads on search pages and often find them useful. But ads that get put on other sites like this one are just annoying with all the images and animation. Yuck.

  • angie_diy
    11 years ago

    Marcolo: You are welcome. I always use a quote -- I always thought you had to on all browsers. I did not know you could ever get away without one.

    Christine,

    I did my demo with the xmp tag (<xmp> and </xmp>). I learned that trick from looking at Buehl's source. I believe that tag is now deprecated, but seems to work on most browsers.

    For the above, I had to spell it out using html entities because how could you display the </xmp> tag?

    There also a "code" and "/code" tag -- I will have to try that one out sometime.

  • segbrown
    11 years ago

    I don't know what mine is called ... but I like it. It's a lazy susan, but the doors don't open outward, they push through and go around with everything else.

    Above it, we did open shelves and a ilttle nook for storing the mixer

  • drbeanie2000
    11 years ago

    lovestocook4six - we are getting one of those - do you like yours?

    Also, what are your fun pulls? Do you like those? They are decorative without having lots of little crevices for crumbs or other dirt to get stuck into.

    bean

  • burntfingers
    11 years ago

    Loves2cook4six, your pullout is exactly what I'm planning for my blind corners (I will have two of them) and I'm also planning to keep small appliances on them and out of the way. Do you like them? Do they leave a lot of dead space around the edges of the cabinet? And, do things fall off??

    Thanks!

    Burntfingers

  • ILoveRed
    11 years ago

    This is what I wanted for my upper corner so I got it for my lower corner as well. Still have the large Susan and lots of storage. Not a pain at all, honestly.

  • ILoveRed
    11 years ago

    Here's a pic of the upper if you are interested.

    I did this for a really silly reason. I wanted to be able to have my coffee maker in this corner and not have to pull it out to pour water into it.

    Lots of storage in the upper as well.

    {{!gwi}}

  • MichelleDT
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Wow...GREAT ideas! Thanks everyone for the pics and options. Second KD had a lazy susan like Marcolo's first pic in the plan. I really like the Magic Corner in Loves2cook4six's pic. Have to send that the the KD.

    I like Segbrown's open shelving as well. Also noticed the Colorado cookbook - are in Colorado?

    Both KD's said the corner drawers wasted too much space - I don't if that is true or not but not an option anyway.

    One corner will remain dead - no options at all to gain storage.

    Cheers,

    M

  • Cloud Swift
    11 years ago

    For us, the blind corner was the best choice. We wanted the sink right next to one side of the corner and drawers on the other side and didn't want to take space from either run to make room for a special corner solution. We have a pantry where we can store some of the extra tall items so the bulky tall storage that some corner solutions provide wasn't of much use to us.

    Corner drawers waste two triangles of space that add up to the same as the 24 by 24 square in a dead corner so I think your KDs are correct.

    Our corner next to the sink is a blind corner but not totally dead. It has one shelf and is accessed from the sink cabinet next to it. We keep extra cleaning supplies in it in, some in a bus tub that can be pulled out to get to them.

  • quiltgirl
    11 years ago

    Somewhere on this site a person explained the math. (actual space gained or not with corner cabinets) I cannot seem to find it right now, but it was not that long ago. After reading that post and all the comments, I have decided to go with the dead corners. Do a search here and read those entries. It may be very helpful to you.

  • edensnake
    10 years ago

    There's a blind corner pull out hardware option from a company called Lee Valley that's significantly cheaper than others I've seen, but looks very similar to the high priced (in my opinion very overpriced) hardware - "Blind Corner Unit"
    At $249 still pricey, but may be within your range.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Lee Valley Tools

  • andreak100
    10 years ago

    eden - I think that some people have mentioned that it (the Lee Valley unit) doesn't seem as sturdy as some of the others that are more pricey. Also, it may not have as much overall storage space - I know that I saw somewhere that the Hafele Magic Corner units extended deeper into the dead corner than the knock offs.

  • Holly- Kay
    10 years ago

    I love my large lazy susans, They hold mixing bowls, large stock pots, an assortment of bake ware, colanders, teapot,slow cooker, pitchers, and more. They are very convenient to use as everything is right at your fingertips.

  • formerlyflorantha
    10 years ago

    We have a G-shaped kitchen, therefore 3 dead corners. How many lazy susans does anyone need?

    One of our corners has a lazy susan, one is accessed from behind (a closet has an Elfa unit for offseason boots that reaches back into the kitchen corner), one has access from the peninsula side of the G--contains party gear. Works for us.

  • momand3boys
    10 years ago

    I don't miss my lazy susan one bit. But I now have a pantry cabinet to put the items that were in there. I have drawers on both sides instead. I love them.

  • itsallaboutthefood
    10 years ago

    I have a super susan which I love (I don't really have a problem with the door banging into things). It is also possible to store some things in the corners of the super susan (i.e. not on the round turn table). Since I use it to hold pantry type items for cooking (popcorn, oils, vinegers), I honestly don't think that corner cabinet can be any more efficient than it is...I love that I can get to things in the back simply by turning it. Having to pull out an insert would be a hassle.

    I also have a wine cooler on the back of my peninsula like sochi does. Great use of space!

  • mailfox7
    10 years ago

    This link explains the dimensions involved in considering to close a blind corner.
    I closed off my two and don't regret it.

    Here is a link that might be useful: closing off blind corner

  • Nancy Cox
    6 years ago

    It's called dead space for a reason so just close it off.

  • cpartist
    6 years ago

    Is there a reason Nancy Cox you needed to bring up a 4 year old thread just to tell us it's dead space?

  • Nancy Cox
    6 years ago

    cpartist! Hello! I'm happy to see you're still following this thread. However my comment was not just to tell you it was dead space. I just cleaned a house with dead space on two upper and one lower. NOT an easy job.

  • Buehl
    6 years ago

    Uh...that makes no sense "Nancy Cox". Everyone knows what it is...

    Please do not resurrect old threads for no real reason - you knock someone off the first page that needs help NOW, not 5 years ago (and who no longer needs help!)

    This thread is from 2012!

  • clfbmp
    5 years ago

    I’m thinking of doing totally dead corners.

  • club924
    5 years ago

    We are in the middle of a remodel and I made the decision to make one corner a dead corner (didn't have room to put in a lazy susan). While hubby is upset over it, I was able to get 2-27" long deep drawers that will probably hold the same amount, if we had a blind corner. Plus, it'll be easier to locate the items than having them in a blind corner. Anyone regret having dead corners?