Slide Out Cutlery drawer

This was the second attempt at utilising the available space below the compressor fridge. The first attempt was not brilliant and I kind of knew I wouldn’t be totally happy until I had a solution that was on a par with the chopping board. What I mean by that is the chopping board had a lot of time dedicated to it to make sure it worked and could stand the test of time. The first incarnation of the lower fridge draw was really just an alternative place to store stuff like batteries, fuses, headphones etc. Basically it was adequate, but not brilliantly executed. We were also having to make do with a flaky solution for our cutlery, which was a draw in front of the sink which has a large portion deeply recessed to make way for the sink waste pipe. Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not having ago at VW or the coachbuilders Westfalia. They did the best they could with the components and space they had at the time. But things have moved on and I was going to make sure I took advantage of this.

So with all of the above in mind I set to relieving the already crowded cutlery draw by relocating below the fridge. This meant that the fridge had to come out along with its shelve. I worked out the space I had to work with and started to look around for suitable parts. I knew that it would need to slide out a lot further than the chopping board so a pair of double extending draw slides were purchased from Screw Fix (UK). From there we took a trip to B&Q  and found an amazing solution which would save a great deal of time in this project. Basically its a bamboo cutlery drawer that expands to fit different size draws in a domestic kitchen. This worked really well as all I needed to do was mount the inner part of the hinge into each side of the cutlery drawer, and the outer part of the hinge on the inside of the unit. Simples!

Components purchased…just a lot more faffing to do 🙂
Drawer fixed to hinge, and hinge fixed to unit

What I did do to make sure the drawer wasn’t going to slide open as I drove around was to mount a block of wood at the back of the drawer to act as a stop buffer. On both the buffer and the tray I attached a magnet so that it would connect as they became close. As you can see from the below video, everything seems to be working a treat 🙂

So this was all well and good, but I needed a front facia and handle. Fortunately the DIY suppliers provided aluminium angle extrusions that perfectly matched half of the depth of the drawer (See below as I measured for size).

So I cut two pieces to the required width, drilled, countersunk and screwed one at the top, and the other at the bottom.

Handle fitted to match the Chopping board. Red anti rattle foam dropped into the compartments.
In place
Nicely flush with the bespoke surround

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