Pantry Design

I'm rehabbing the kitchen area and we are tired of the pantry or lack of one. To make a longer story short Rev A Shelf has swinging doors and shelves captured on the inside of the pantry and the door. I wanna use this idea but I am having trouble with the hinges. The solid boxes represent the swinging shelves. When one side is open it should lay directly in front of the other shelf. I figure that the hinges need to handle 100 lbs each. I thought of piano hinge but would prefer individual hinges 3-4 suppose. The next question is going to deal with the weight of the box and contents and how to keep it from ripping itself apart.

Any thoughts?

Dave,
What about a slide out assembly of some sort? Hinge both section on the left side attached to a drawer slide type deal. They would only need to come out far enough to pivot at the front corner for full access. A couple small rollers or wheels on the bottom should handle the weight. The slides/hinges/pivots could easily be hidden when closed by the box construction.

hmmm I can't quite picture that Jim. So your suggesting to put both boxes on the left side of the cabinet and both boxes slide to the front or to the side?

I'll give you call this evening if that is ok.

Friday evening yes! BTW are you east or west?The shop cart awaits you! LOL

Headed east for the weekend. I'll try to get there. Or you can bring it up and we can meet at the 2xT. I'll buy breakfast!!:D

After much looking I have desired to use the Soss 212 med. duty concealed hinges.


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since it looks like you're not using the entire depth of the cabinet, why not use pull-out shelves instead? you'll be able to reclaim all the width of the cabinet and much of the depth, depending on what slides you choose.

There is only 4 inches front to back not being used. What type slide would you suggest. BTW the left rear of the cabinet is a broom closet that will have a door top to bottom.




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I'm not sure about the usability of this design. If you just use the front shelves, then - ok - they're easy to reach in to. And the door shelves will get a lot of use.

But that set of back shelves...1) You open a door - whoops, you must open BOTH doors 2) you swing a set of front shelves almost 180deg to access the back shelf 3) get your item 4) swing the front shelf 180deg back (you have to do this because there isn't room to close the doors with the front shelf swung 5) you close both doors. And you have to do ALL of that to put it back.

This might work for me - I'm location dependent so if I put the rice on the left-side top back shelf, I will always go look there. But it wouldn't work for my wife, who sticks things in the first available space that fits. So, not knowing where something MIGHT be, I'd be swinging those front shelves a lot just to get a glimpse of what MIGHT be on those back shelves.

With pull out shelves / drawers you always have full visibility to help locate what you're looking for. And you won't have that awkward situation of not being able to close the doors with the front shelves swung over.

Here's a pantry I just finished. Slide out shelf pantry.

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Originally Posted by Keith Pleas

I'm not sure about the usability of this design. If you just use the front shelves, then - ok - they're easy to reach in to. And the door shelves will get a lot of use.

But that set of back shelves...1) You open a door - whoops, you must open BOTH doors 2) you swing a set of front shelves almost 180deg to access the back shelf 3) get your item 4) swing the front shelf 180deg back (you have to do this because there isn't room to close the doors with the front shelf swung 5) you close both doors. And you have to do ALL of that to put it back.

This might work for me - I'm location dependent so if I put the rice on the left-side top back shelf, I will always go look there. But it wouldn't work for my wife, who sticks things in the first available space that fits. So, not knowing where something MIGHT be, I'd be swinging those front shelves a lot just to get a glimpse of what MIGHT be on those back shelves.

With pull out shelves / drawers you always have full visibility to help locate what you're looking for. And you won't have that awkward situation of not being able to close the doors with the front shelves swung over.

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Yes the swinging doors will be used a lot that is why I'm using the Soss hinges. The cabinet is 30 inched deep and opening a slider of that size into the kitchen is a non starter. Now if you had an idea of how to uses some slides that would still allow access to back shelf and not exceed the confines of the box I'm all ears. I might have to label areas for my wife as well LOL.
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Quote:

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Originally Posted by David Nelson1

The cabinet is 30 inched deep and opening a slider of that size into the kitchen is a non starter. Now if you had an idea of how to uses some slides that would still allow access to back shelf and not exceed the confines of the box I'm all ears. I might have to label areas for my wife as well LOL.

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First, you don't have to pull out the 30" - it would be less the depth of the shelves on the doors (let's say 6"). And it wouldn't have to be a full extension of the remaining 24", but what the heck let's do that. So now the absolute worst case is an extended drawer out to 48", which is 18" past the front of the cabinet. Since you're pulling the stuff out you could even stand to one side to access that drawer, compared to reaching back into cabinet in your design (how well lit will those shelves be, particularly with the swung-away part blocking off light from the side?).

So what would the intrusion be for your design? And that's not "maximum", but literally any time you wanted to access anything in the back half of the cabinet. Or even SEE what's in that area. I think you have the width at 36" with a 6" broom area, so call it 30" wide as well. And let's use 12" for the front and rear "halves" of the shelving. So that puts the hinge point 24" out from the back. And you're swinging something that is 15" wide, so at maximum point it's going to be 19.21" hinge to far corner, which is...43.21". Again, that is every time you swing a door, and you have to swing that door twice every time you want to access that back "half" of the shelving. And you have to reach to the back of the cabinet rather than bring it forward.

In both scenarios you will have to swing the right-most door past perpendicular to get it's shelving out of the way - of the extension drawers in my design and either side swinging on the right-hand side with your design.

I do have one more idea for you if you choose your design - use plexiglass backs for the swinging sections - that way you could possibly see through to what's behind without having to swing anything.