Kitchen Cabinet Upgrade: Retrofit a Lazy Susan (Part 1 of 3)
By Jim MalleryRefacingCabinet.com Columnist
(Part 1 of 3)
If you are one of the many souls plagued by a lazy Lazy Susan, one of those plastic cheapo units on a spindle in your corner base cabinet, rejoice! It's often possible to retrofit your cabinet with a quality, shelf-style Lazy Susan that is easy to use, solid, and durable. It isn't easy, but if you are inclined toward challenges, it is worth it. Here are six steps to get you started.
- Visualize. Your two spinning shelves rotate on ball-bearing plates--one on the bottom of the cabinet and the other on a stationary shelf. No spindle. No doors that rotate with the whole unit. Almost nothing to break or go out of adjustment. They're strong enough for heavy kitchen appliances--several of them.
- Cheapo? If you have really cheap cabinets, the kind with backs and sides of ¼" plywood or less, you can stop here. You don't have the structure to hold the second shelf. These kitchen cabinets are not worth this type of upgrade.
- Doors. If your old corner unit had a Lazy Susan with attached doors that rotate with the unit, you need to buy new doors. Hence, if this work is part of an overall cabinet refacing, all the better. Most any cabinet shop make the doors for you, or you can find many sites online that sell cabinet doors. In either case, you should be able to match your existing cabinet doors. You can buy Eurostyle hidden hinges for the bi-fold, 90-degree doors, or your cabinet shop can provide them and mount them on the doors.
- Shelf pins. Your upper shelf rests atop shelf pins--1/4" is the standard size. Again, you can buy these online, although your "big box" store should also carry them.
- Bearings. The critical element in the whole system is your bearing plates. You can buy them online or from your cabinet shop. I would suggest buying them from your cabinet shop to avoid the possibility of getting poor quality bearing plates online unless you have an online source you trust.
- Rotating shelves. Procure them online, or if you are a wood-shop person, make them. Make sure you have a raised edge to reduce the chance of things falling into the deep recesses of your corner cabinet. You want pie-shaped shelves (with a 90-degree wedge cut out). Measure and make sure you get a size that slides diagonally through the door opening with about 5" to spare. If you are making them, a sheet of 3/4" cabinet-grade birch plywood should take care of your needs (you can use the rest of the sheet to make the base shelf, which we'll show you in the next article in this series).
This gets you set up to construct your shelf-style Lazy Susan. In our second article of three in the series, we'll discuss getting the middle shelf ready, and in the final article, we'll put it all together.
About The Author
Jim Mallery, a semi-retired journalist and onetime registered contractor, has extensive experience remodeling, repairing and rebuilding homes.
