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I have a bathroom cupboard that measures about 15 inches wide by 9 feet tall (there are shelves, some of which are easier to remove than others).
I would like to do the following:
1) put an ikea rationell pull out storage unit inside the bottom. Anybody use these interior fittings on 1937 construction????
2) Replace the old wooden doors with Ikea doors.
My question is more about the Rationell question. Has anybody here used it out of an Ikea box. If so, how well does it work, how easily does it install, and so forth?
Does the cabinet in your house have a face frame? If it does, you may not be able to use IKEA interior fittings since they are designed to be used with no face frame. What is the interior width of your cabinet? How deep front to back is it?
AN IKEA 15" wide cabinet is 13.5" wide inside - the drawers are designed to fit that width. Even if your cabinet is the right width with no face frame you would still not have the holes in the precise locations to make everything fit just right.
Would it be at all possible to replace the entire cabinet? The boxes for the IKEA cabinets are fairly cheap to purchase - but they make it so much easier to put the fittings and doors together with the cabinet.
THanks for such a quick response to my query. I'll see if I can provide you with more of the necessary information.
The cupboard is built in--it's actually formed out of a notch from the back of one of the bedroom closets, so fully replacing the cuboard is not an option. It does have a face frame, which is a wooden frame placed on the plaster cuboard, kind of like a regular door frame. This could be removed without too much difficulty. (And this is one of the things that I've already taken into account ). Because the sides are plaster (the current shelves are actually suspended on wooden rails), there are no holes to match up. Assuming I could get inside the cupboard enough to drill the holes, that wouldn't be a problem.
The interior dimension is 13.5 wide, and it's 18 inches deep. Possibly not deep enough.
When I first wanted to do this (about 2 years ago), Ikea seemed to have pull-outs available in more sizes. I saw this interior fitting in a quick trip to the new Red Hook ikea last week.
The 18" depth will be your biggest problem - IKEA makes base cabinet depth drawers that are actually about 21.5" deep and wall cabinet depth drawers that are about 9.5" deep. While Blum, the manufacturer of the IKEA Rationell drawers, does make the same type of drawers in a wider variety of sizes, they are pretty expensive.
Are you any good at carpentry? It is not that hard to build drawer boxes - 1/2" plywood for sides, 1/4" for the bottoms, no fancy joints, just glue and nail together. Get the full extension drawer glides at Home Depot and screw to the sides of the drawer boxes and the insides of the space.
Then apply IKEA fronts to the fronts of the drawer boxes. Screw from the inside and then drill holes for handles.
Doors are easier - there you can use the IKEA hinges. Attach them to the doors and then screw to the inside of the cabinet. I found that when the original screws & inserts are no longer together, 1-1/4" deck screws work great as long as the sides of the cabinet are thick enough they won't come through.
For a standard cabinet to have adjustable shelves, the easiest thing to do is to get shelf standards with clips. I like the Knape & Voight ones from Ace hardware but Home Depot and Lowes sell similar ones. You attach the standards to the inside of the cabinet box, clip the clips into the standards and rest a shelf on the clips. You can even use the IKEA shelves since they would fit your space - but you would have to cut them down to fit the depth.
Hello again and thank you. After getting your first response, I was finally able to get the complete measurements of the interior fittings, and I agree, it's probably not going to work. Arrgghh! So close. I was hoping to find a ready made option! (or something close to it).
Unfortunately, there are a number of reasons why I'm handy at carpentry, not least because this is a NYC apartment, with no room to store much in the way of tools. By the time I paid the upcharges at the lumber yard to cut the wood to make a few shelves and/or boxes, I could probably have hired a handyman.
Your ideas are great though and I'll see if there's some way to make them work.
Can you perhaps "line" the cupboard with plywood, screwing the ply to the already-mounted battens for the shelves?
You might be able to use these pre-existing battens as the base for drawer runners from HD (or another place) and installing your own roll-out shelves.
There are plenty of rolling shelf places (e.g.: rolloutshelf.com, kitchenshelves.com, rollingshelves.com, etc.) -- you can see how they mount runners to pre-existing shelves (your battens), to the side or bottom of the cabinet (the plywood lining you'd make) -- many shelf depths are available, so fitting an 18" deep cupboard is quite possible.
[rollingshelves.com sell a DIY kit: Unfinished Sliding shelves can be added anywhere -- you cut them to width; depths from 12-22" at 2" intervals; buy one 30" kit and the "hardware kit" and you can make 2 - 15" wide shelves. But isn't exactly dirt cheap. ]
Then, as woodswell suggested, you can use IKEA fronts/hinges/etc. for the pretty part.
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). Because the sides are plaster (the current shelves are actually suspended on wooden rails), there are no holes to match up. Assuming I could get inside the cupboard enough to drill the holes, that wouldn't be a problem.
