Anyone made any kitchen islands?
Do’s and Don’ts requested!
Planning on it having caster wheels, 3 push to open drawers along one side, and a spice rack carousel as a push to open cupboard on one of the square sides.
Plus a large butcher block countertop
On push to open drawers - they can be a real pain. My brother does kitchens professionally, did half a kitchen for my folks and gave them push to open drawers, they ended up being such a PITA to fit and use that he’s gone back to conventional soft close undermount sliders for the second half we fitted this year.
If it’s what you want then go for it, but that was the experience we had.
But if you do stick with push to open - use locking castors on the feet!
Cheers for the advice!
I built one of these years ago, and it has been ‘evolved’ since then a few times.
Based on an 80cm wide base unit from Ikea, it’s got three drawers with soft-close runners. I put matching drawer-fronts on the rear of the cabinet too, to make it match.
There are heavy duty locking caster wheels on the bottom. I also put some blocks in between these and the cabinet, as the robot vacuum couldn’t get underneath otherwise.
I also put a solid cover over the base unit (as they don’t have a “top”), with some blocks either side and then a worktop on top. This gives a recess underneath the worktop, accessible from either side, where we store chopping boards.
The worktop overhangs each end but is flush along the main sides; this allows people to sit comfortably at either end.
The extra height added with the various blocks means the worktop is now at a marginally higher level than typical countertop in a kitchen.
I have also added some decor panels to the sides (beneath the countertop) to make them more attractive than just bare cabinets. Not strictly necessary, but it hid the blocks that raise the top, and covered some other indiscretions.
We have to make sure we don’t open more than one drawer at a time, or it will start to lean over.
The first caster wheels eventually disintegrated from the weight of everything in there, even although they were supposedly heavy duty.
I can take pics and attach them if you like?
Pics would be great, did you go for 4 caster wheels or more? I’ve built the frame of it now and with the casters currently I wonder if it’ll be too heavy with everything to come
Hi Joel - great project.
Personally, I wouldn’t put more castors on. My view is that for a use like this you need at least two locking castors. This of course would require bigger castors, 4 of which would carry the load.
Cheers Samuel, yes at the moment I have 4 on, 2 with locks that can hold up to 200kg, might swap them out for ones that can carry a heavier load though
Sorry for slow reply…
We just have four casters on there. These cabinets sit on four legs normally so we figured that would be ok. There is a bit of a lean to the front beginning to creep in but I think that’s because we have overloaded some of the drawers. (Excuse the mess!)
Hi David,
Looks excellent!
How much of the worktop is out to allow you to sit on a stool underneath comfortably?
Thank you!
Overhang is about 30cm each side, but in a previous incarnation, it was a bit more - maybe 40-50cm?
It weighs a lot, particularly when the drawers are full, so there isn’t much chance of it tilting over if you lean on the overhang. You’d need quite a significant force to shift the centre of gravity beyond the nearer casters.
What CAN happen is if you open the drawers and then (particularly the bottom drawer, which is v heavy as it’s full of glass containers) put some weight on that… it starts to roll over at that point. But it’s a slow and graceful roll (!!) so easy to catch and stop. No disasters encountered as yet!
The one thing I miss is that there’s no easy way to get power onto it, for example to use a stand mixer. I’ve considered putting a socket into the ceiling overhead, as it’s extraordinarily low in this kitchen (only 2m high, so well below normal ceiling height). In the previous place we lived, there was a 10 foot high ceiling, so clearly that wasn’t viable. I was pondering a floorbox, as you might find in an office, but then that would be a bit more of a commitment - cutting floorboards etc.
Excellent advice!
I’m working on mine having extensions that can be removed for the countertop to save on space.
An idea for your power issue could be a relatively cheap power bank in one of the drawers, could drill through to get it to the top, maybe if you got one that gave your cooking devices a good few hours of charge it wouldn’t need to be taken out and recharged that often.
Not the most perfect of solutions but saves on any large jobs involving floorboards!
