[NBeth]

Suppose you had to do an ultra budget remodel. No time or money to rip the old stuff out, even if you use Arlig doors on the new. But really wanting drawers instead of doors! Could you build out the interior of a traditional face framed cab w / 2x4s (or whatever) so everything slides past nicely, then mount Ikea's drawer rails, attach the lower drawer to the old front, and create a pullout with internal drawers? Obviously you might get into trouble if the cab is one of those never ending caverns going straight across the room with five doors on the outside, but for simplicity's sake, imagine nothing larger than 36", so that previously established mods could be accomplished. Has anyone ever tried this?

No, I don't have anything on my plate at the moment. But I can foresee a project which might have an interim stage like this, then a real transformation several years down the road (where I would of course recycle the drawer parts into a real new kitchen ).

	W definition W is a wall cabinet designation, as in W18, can be a stand-in for Wide, or when followed by a / stands for With.

[JimGo]

I wonder if, by the time you were done modifying the cabs, if you wouldn't have spent a good chunk of the cost of new cabinets.

[NBeth]

Cost would be 2x4s or similar, screws to attach, plus internal drawers and pullout part kit. It's true drawers are expensive, but if you save both the frames and the fronts, plus all time/cost associated with tear out and reinstallation, wouldn't that be substantial? I've seen plenty of "updated" kitchens I could live with looks wise (not my thing maybe but not horrible), where everything is solid and the work flow is tolerable, but nearly all of the base cabs are door cabs. Getting drawers into such a kitchen would improve function enormously until other issues in this project could be addressed. Or?

[JimGo]

Trying to think this through. If you're mod'ing a 30" base cab, for example, to accept drawers, if it's a framed cab aren't you reducing the width to significantly less than 30" (about 28" or so?) which means you'll have to either drop down to 24" drawers or create your own backs and bottoms for the drawers. You'll lose a lot of space that way.

As for costs, again, if you're modding the drawers, you've got both time and capital costs. If you aren't modding the drawers, then I guess your costs would be lower. Are you assuming just a single pull-out, or are you thinking you'd use drawer fronts? If fronts, are they Ikea fronts or someone else's? In our kitchen (Adel Med. Brn), the fronts are where most of the cost came in, not the cabs.

I still think that, by the time you're done, you're shelling out almost as much as if you went ahead and replaced everything, and merely assumed you'd be detaching the cabs from the wall and reusing them in the new configuration instead.

This is, of course, just my humble opinion.

[NBeth]

No new drawer fronts or doors, just internals and old doors turned into pullout doors, for maximum economy. Yep, in some cases we'd be sacrificing some space if we didn't have time for mods. I suspect we'd do a mixture. But considering that I literally *lost* a pot in our old place (never got packed!) because it was so hard to find/see/reach the stuff in the back, I'd be willing to give up some amount of theoretical space in order to gain more useful space! The project I'm envisioning would initially be used by someone with limited mobility/flexibility. Traditional face framed caverns might as well be on Mars for them...

[Narf]

Say a 36" cabinet ... the sides of the frame take up 3", and another 1-1/2" for the center stile ... that's now down to a 31-1/2" cabinet to fit drawers. Divided by two, that's not enough space for the 18" drawers to work (16-1/2" needed for each), which means 15" drawers (13-1/2" drawers) ... so from being able to use 36" drawers (34-1/2"), one is down to only being able to use 27" worth of drawers.

Without factoring the drawer box sides, the 7-1/2" of width lost, by the 20" depth, and by 28-1/2" of height equates to 4275 cu.in. less usable space over a full 36" setup - that's just under 2-1/2 cu.ft. of "lost" space ... in one cabinet!

IMHO , the space lost plus the time it'd take to modify isn't worth it at all; on a budget, look for cabinet boxes from AS-IS, which can be priced for less than $5 if bought in pieces to about $20 assembled.

	IMHO IMHO means In My Humble Opinion

[NBeth]

In our old place we didn't have center stiles, so that makes a big difference! Hmmm. Part of the issue I'm anticipating is a time + money crunch. Much easier to do the right thing when you have at least one but when both are short.... I'm guessing that if we tried this it would be selectively...and might include some selective full replacements as well....

[NBeth]

Has anyone ever added rollout shelves to regular cabs? maybe just sitting on top of each existing shelf?

[kelly]

That last suggestion was what I was thinking- why try to turn the cabinets into drawers when you can add pull out shelves behind the door? I think you remove the original shelf.

Little as I like to send anyone looking outside IKEA, there are plenty of places that specialize in this...the worst would be to spend the little time and money you've got on a wild goose chase and find that it doesn't work like you thought it would.

Why not try modding one cabinet before making any decision?

[tomkist]

I think the idea of pull-out shelves is probably easier to accomplish... A friend's kitchen was re-faced and added pull-out shelves in the same project.