Kitchen Design- Maximizing Your Space In The Corner

By Author: Jason Delmar
Total Articles: 335
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It should be no big surprise, but every kitchen is going to have it's little quirks or oddities that may make selecting stock cabinets a bit of a challenge. The difficulty usually lies in the corners, where it may be difficult to maximize the utility of the base cabinets. Luckily there are a few options to help with tricky corners when you are laying out your kitchen cabinet design.

Whether you are talking about base cabinets or wall cabinets, it is really going to come down to three choices- a diagonal corner cabinet, and blind base cabinet, or leaving dead space. Your decision on which to use will usually be based on a combination of available space, overall look, and need for storage space. With that in mind, here are some pro's and con's for all three.

DIAGONAL CORNER CABINET- Most stock cabinet manufacturers or rta cabinet importers will have these in one or two different size base cabinets, and they will usually come with a lazy susan kit installed. In terms of available storage space, this cabinet will definitely give you the most. It gives you easy access to the space by utilizing a bi-folding ...
... cabinet door. While it is the most commonly used cabinet for a corner space, it does have it's drawbacks. The cabinet is usually 36" on both sides, which means that you are limited on how you can arrange the cabinets on either side of it. While is gives you access to the full space, the lazy susan unit will sometimes limit how you can use that space. Even with the drawbacks, it is still the most common corner cabinet used in kitchen design.

BLIND BASE CABINET- When space is not available on both walls in a corner, the blind base cabinet is the cabinet to use. The blind base cabinet is basically a two door cabinet that has one door removed. It comes with an extra thick stile in the middle to allow the cabinet to be shifted left or right to fill the space. The unique feature about a blind cabinet is that is can occupy anywhere from 42", up to 48" giving you versatility when laying out the kitchen. The drawback to this cabinet is the fact that you don't have easy access to the half of the cabinet that is hidden. This can make it awkward to remove items placed back in there.

DEAD SPACE - If you are limited on both walls, and the blind cabinet would take up too much space, the last alternative would be to leave dead space. While losing storage space is the last thing you want to do, it is sometimes unavoidable (especially in small kitchens). When neither of the options above will work, you have to think about maximizing the space around the corner. To do this, you will be butting the edges of the cabinets from the two walls together. The tricky part comes when you have drawers. By simply butting them together you will not be able to open the drawers. To get around this, you will need filler strips in the corner to bump out the cabinet and allow room for the drawer(s) to open.

So if you are tackling a kitchen renovation on your own, it is important to focus on the corner cabinets and the appliances, filling in the gaps from there.
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