Lazy Susan Cabinets

25 March 2008

Sometimes the easiest way to go round a corner is to round a corner, which explains the popularity of both Half Moon Pivots and Lazy Susans as solutions to the problem of blind corners in base cabinets. But if you look at them more closely, you may find that it’s a solution that, um, cuts some corners (sorry!).

First, people who order cabinets are always a bit taken aback to discover that the basic charge of so-much-a-linear-foot doesn’t include the extras. And the extras tend to make up just about everything that a body would want in a kitchen over and above one drawer and one door all the way around the base cabinets. If you want a drawer bank, that’s extra. If you want roll-out shelves for pots and pans, that’s extra. Pantry? C’mon, you know that’s extra!

Part of that is marketing, but part of it, too, is really just the nature of the beast. You and I have not met yet, so I can’t possibly know what you’re going to want in your kitchen. But to give you a figure to compare with others, I can quote you a price for basic cabinets—one drawer, one door.

What that means, though, is that Half Moon Pivots and Lazy Susans are going to be extras. And by the time you get to those, you’ve just got to have them. So if it means scrimping a little, cutting back in another area of the kitchen, maybe even accepting a lesser unit for that blind corner, so be it.

But with these items, as with anything else, you will get what you pay for. The reason they come in a number of different prices is because they come in a number of different qualities. The cheaper ones will have shelving that is only rated for fifty pounds, so if, like so many others, you load those babies up with canned goods, you’re in for a nasty surprise. The bearings will eventually fail under that kind of load, and the shelves will then either wobble badly or not turn at all.

But even for those that are strong enough for the intended load and that continue to work as they did brand new, there are problems. Load them up with canned goods, and you’re bound to have an occasional item fall off the back into no man’s land. Although I suppose a body could get a dog and really train him well!

But the main problem with them is that they don’t really solve the problem. I’ve included a diagram of a standard blind corner with inside dimensions. Basically, when you think about it, there are three squares here, each 22½”x22½”. Two of them are readily accessible, but what we want to do here is to make use of the 506 square inches in that blind corner and have them easily available.

The problem with both Half Moon Pivots and Lazy Susans is that they only seem to make the contents of those blind corners accessible. But to prove that, we have to do the math.

Typically, the less expensive of the two options is the Half Moon Pivot. The one shown here is intended to occupy the larger cabinet in my illustration. It is 35″ wide, which means that it has an area of 481 square inches. That is LESS than the area we would have if we simply boarded up the blind corner and accessed the two legs of the corner.

The Lazy Susan does little better. The largest available is 32″, and you will note the pie shaped cutouts, which means that one fourth of each shelf is simply gone. The area available, then, is 603 square inches, which is an improvement over the Half Moon Pivot, but it comes at a cost. In order to access this style of Lazy Susan, it is necessary to utilize 12″ off either side of the corner, which, in effect gives up one of the three sections available to us for storage.

Really, the “storage advantage” over a blind corner shelf is less than 100 square inches, enough room for two or three cans of soup, maybe. And at what cost? Because a unit of that size, if it is to work for a lifetime, will cost well in excess of a thousand dollars, by the time it’s installed. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you figure all the costs that go into a kitchen, it is money that might better be put to use elsewhere.

Unless we could come up with something that just flat solved the problem. I’ve been my whole life rooting through those blind corners. I’d kill for something that worked.

Meta

Lazy Susan Cabinets

Leave a Reply