Drawer Slides

[Tom Ghesquiere]

I have a lot of lower cabinet space in the kitchen where I want to add drawers in spaces where I currently have shelving. Think of putting a drawer mounted on top of the shelf to make better use of the space. Last month Handyman magazine had a article but their application is different than my cabinets. I am looking for hardware that would be mounted to the bottom of the drawers and attached to the existing shelving. Sidemount slides take space and require mounting frames inside the cabinet. Surely somebody makes a slide for this application!! I checked Rockler, Blum and others and did not find what I'm looking for. Help!!

[Jeff Sudmeier]

I have seen slides that mount to the bottom of the cabinet (or shelf) and then to the side of the drawer. You will lose about 1 inch in the drawer width to allow for the slides. However, if you find bottom mounted slides that will fit your application, you will lose about 1/2 inch in height, so the difference in dimensions is very low.

I have seen this Center mount slide used in kitchen cabinets, but only on narrow drawers. You may be able to use two. Hopefully others will be able to let you know if you would be better of with slides that mount to the bottom of the cabinet and sides of the drawer or a center mount slide.

Jeff

[Steve Cox]

If you use sidemount slides (full extension) you will lose 1" on the width of the drawer. If you mount slides to the shelves, you lose the thickness of the shelving, 3/4", plus the height requirements of the slide, typically 1/2". I don't see that bottom mount is more efficient than side mount. The next piece of info we need is do you have face frame cabinets or frameless? If frameless, there is no need for frames for the drawers inside the cabinet, they simply mount to the cabinet sides. If face frame, you will have to space the slides out from the cabinet sides the width of the face frames but all slide systems I've seen have mounting brackets for the slides to space them out or you could simply attach a block of wood to the side to space out the slide. Not exactly building frames inside the existing cabinets. More info on your cabinet types would be helpful.

[Tom Ghesquiere]

Thanks for the guidance. My cabinets have face frames and to complicate things further, they have a divider between the two doors. The shelving is wide open inside, that's why I'd have to build some kind of framing to hold the slides. I have lots of height so losing space on the bottom of the drawer is not as critical. I may just need to invent these guides. I could even install small roller wheels on each corner of the drawer and then install thin wood rails front to back to keep the drawers rolling straight.

[Lars Thomas]

Also remember that bottom mount slides will not support as heavy a load (all other things being equal). This could be a consideration if you plan to put pots/pans on the drawer.

[Dan Gill]

If you have a face frame and a divider between the doors, you have a place to put a cleat and you can attach the slides to that. I did the same thing recently in my kitchen renovation. In fact, you can gain a little of that half-inch on each side back - part of that space can be behind your face frame, where the stationary part of the slide mounts.

I used full extension side-mount slide, and that's what I recommend. The only thing I would do differently next time is to have one moveable shelf with the slides mounted to it. We have one space where we'd like to put something taller, but there's just not room.

This thread has my roll-outs in it (and some others):
Rollout Thread

[Steve Cox]

Are the shelves moveaqble or fixed? If fixed, why not bag the whole manufactured slide idea and simply make wooden guides to keep the drawers in place. Then all you need is a block of wood on either side of the drawer attached to the shelving for side guides plus one attached to the bottom of the next shelf up to keep the drawer from tipping. Then you lose no space to the side or vertically plus you save money to boot.

[Hoa Dinh]

I just use a set of full-length "regular" drawer slide (Waterloo) and bottom-mount them. There are some drawers like that in the kitchen and I haven't heard any complaint about them from my SWMBO for the last 5 years.

But the load can't be heavy. I can't recall where I got the info from, but a 100 lb side-mounted drawer slide pair is rated at only 35 lb when bottom mounted.

Of course it's not as smooth as side-mounted.