General question: Where are fillers needed?

8 years ago

Hi, I'm llucy and I love looking at small home plans and play at designing the *forever cottage* I fantasize about having one day. I research things like small versions of standard appliances, drawer stacks, Ikea sizes and such. What I don't know is where fillers should go and how much to allow. Anyone who cares to share their knowledge /opinion I'd very much appreciate. :)

Featured Answer

Nancy in Mich

8 years ago

last modified: 8 years ago

I agree with Steph's comments in both of her posts, and Phoggies, too. A lot of the time, fillers are just there for the convenience of using preset cabinet sizes, and if you have custom cabinets made, none will be needed. There are a few spots where you do need them, though. He is one example. In my current kitchen we bought a set of used cabinets and I sanded and stained them and hubby polyurethaned them, and Jim, our carpenter and general contractor, put my design in action. He also made a few extra cabinets to match for the spaces we did not have filled with the set we bought.

He made this corner cabinet for a double wall oven into a raised dishwasher cabinet for me. Since it was at an angle to the pantry cabinet next to it, the two sets of doors bumped into each other and you could not open either one until he put a 1" spacer between the two full-length cabinets. This is one place that a small spacer is needed.

Now the pantry opens wide!

Sorry, but no photo of that 1" filler!

For reasons unknown to me, the cabinet company, 24 years earlier, when making these cabinets custom for a kitchen in Connecticut, did put in a filler about 2" wide to the right of the stack of drawers right behind the dog. I am trying to remember pictures of the original kitchen to figure the reason for this, but I cannot remember what was next to this set of drawers. It serves no function and we could have removed the extra piece if we had needed the space. As it is, we ended up with 6" of extra space at the end of the the cabinet run and put a filler in there. We were not as concerned about balancing out the look as we were with saving money! Behind the open cupboard door on the right you can see a skinny 6" wide vertical door for a cookie sheet cabinet. Then there is 6" of oak filler until the corner.

The french door fridge is in the foreground on the right. Behind that are three drawers that Jim made in his shop at home to match the rest of the set. They are below our wall oven. I was impressed that he could match the style so well!

So that is my demonstration on the proper and improper use of fillers!

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (8)

desertsteph
8 years ago
I don't know a whole bunch about it but you will need filler if the fridge is up against a wall on one side cause the door won't open completely. It needs to open fully so that the drawers inside can be pulled out to get things and to pull them all the way out to clean.

And you'll need it in a corner if you don't use a LS or SS but drawers on either side of the corner. There have been those who've found out too late that the drawer on one side of the corner hits the handle/knob (or the oven door /handle) of which ever of those are on the other side of the corner. It ends up they can only pull the drawer out a few inches.

That can happen if you put a dw too close into that corner area also. When you open the dw the door might bang into the oven handle on the stove if the stove is on the other side of the corner (of the connecting cabinet run).

Can you visualize what I mean above? 'cause I have no way to do a drawing to post. Let me know if it makes sense to you.
llucy thanked desertsteph
phoggie
8 years ago
I think if you take measurements to a cabinet maker, he should be able to arrange your kitchen cabinets with no....or very little...fillers. Mine has none.
llucy thanked phoggie
Related Discussions
General Newb Questions
Q
Comments (10)
I don't have the time right now to go into everything you inquired about. Just a few quick observations. For as much as you plan to grow, making your own mix will save you money over buying pre-made mixes. Peat, vermiculite and perlite are the most common ingredients in store bought mixes. Some also use small bark pieces. There are many recipes for better home made potting mixes and you can read the posts in this forum where Tapla (Al) discusses one of his mixes as well as the properties of mixes in general. Feel free to use whatever is easily and least expensively available in your area, but the Container Soils and Water (or something like that) post will help you understand what to look for. For cheap containers look to nurseries for nursery container discards. You want the larger ones, 12" and up for most of what you wish to grow. A little duct tape will fix any cracks for a season of growing. Also hit up restaurants and bakeries for free 5 gallon buckets. Tips on getting good yield? Keep the potting mix moist, don't let it dry out. A plant that wilts in the heat will probably recover if watered soon enough, but it's yield will be affected. Also, fertilize regularly. Use a water soluble fertilizer so it is rapidly available to the plants and use it full strength no less than every other week. High nitrogen (the first number) for plants grown for leaves and lower N for plants grown for roots/bulbs/fruit. Good growing to you.
...See More
Question for those of you who have pullout fillers (spice/etc)
Q
Comments (7)
There is a difference between a natural finish, in which a wood is finish sanded and a poly or other type of top coat applied, and UNfinished. UNfinished wood has not been protected, may not be smooth, and cannot be cleaned and used as finished wood without it looking bad quickly. Rev-a-shelf does not finish its products to match your cabinets. They are all shipped as natural finished maple, but are NOT unfinished. If you actually got UNfinished, you or your KD or kitchen installer should contact them to correct this error, and it should have been caught before they were installed. If there are pencil markings on the natural finish they were almost certainly put there by the installer for the purpose of measuring and installing them. If you want them painted or stained to match your cabinets, they will need to be stripped, because there already IS a clear finish on them, and then REfinished to match your cabinets. There is no reason that cannot be done, but you would have to arrange to have it done by someone separately. If I bought pullouts and organizers from my cabinet company with my original cabinet order, I would expect them to match. If they come from 2 different companies as separate orders, they couldn't match. Rev-a-shelf has no way of matching your cabinets. My SuperSusan, from my cabinet company, match the interior of my cabinets. My pullout, from Rev-a-shelf, has a natural maple finish. I don't mind it, but if you do, have it refinished. Sue
...See More
Do I need this cabinet? And filler question...
Q
Comments (15)
You KD may have put the range there so you would have an even amount of standing room on either side(21") when the dishwasher is open. If you don't have that 9" cabinet, you will only have 12" standing room on the right side of your range. I currently have 12" on both sides of my cooktop and it's impossible to work on that space, especially when it's on a corner. Of course you may decide that you don't need that since it looks like you can pivot to the right and use that counter. I ended up with a 9" cabinet as well in my design and let's face it-it's not ideal. If you do end up with it see if you can make it a pullout, do a drawer on top or at least put a shelf in it. I see it could be useful for cutting boards or baking sheets since it's right by a usable prep zone and the range. Alternatively you could block the corner off with two drawer stacks. You would have a 21" on the right of the range and a 12" around the corner which could be great for wraps, towels, pot holders and some cooks tools. Now that I've said all that, here's what I would do if it were mine. I would allow for some symmetry on the wall cabinets by having a 36" wide on either side of the hood. 18" doors look better IMO. you still may have to use a stool to access the far right one as you are not wrapping them around the corner. This gives you an 18" base on the left of range for towels, pot holders, wraps and cooks tools. I would do a 4drawer stack. Then you could see if your cabinet maker can do a 42" corner cabinet. Some do, some don't. If not that, then any of the other corner options such as LeMans for corner blinds,blocking off, corner drawers, etc could be done. HTH
...See More
Questions on installing a standby generator
Q
Comments (7)
Thanks for all the replies! My reason for running the #6 ground is that I already have it. If I didn't, I'd go with the #8 for sure. I know that code here does not require sch80, and my only reason to run 2" was ease of pulling the #6 conductors. If memory serves, the conduit fill calculator I checked specified 1" or 1 1/4" for 4 pieces of #6 and 2 of #12. That would indeed make termination easier. Maybe pulling the #6 through 1" or 1 1/4" won't be that difficult, I do not know. I have never pulled #6 through conduit before. I have not verified as of yet, but this generator was previously installed localy (same codes apply). I have yet to install the generator itself into the enclosure and reconnect the leads from the generator head. However, I was under the understanding that the critical thing on the ground is that it is not grounded except to be connected to the ground wire that will run back to the ground bar in the breaker panel? Ditto on the neutral. Am I not understanding something correctly, or am I missing something?
...See More
llucy
Original Author
8 years ago
That's interesting phoggie. I'm not looking for cabinets at this time, I'm playing with designs for a small home I may have one day. I can "graph out" layouts with certain sizes of cabs, but I hadn't heard about fillers into I saw some included in Kitchen Forum poster's plan.

Looking at my existing kitchen there appears to be a filler on one side of my dishwasher and another between a narrow cab and the lazy susan cab. Two things Steph mentioned. :)
desertsteph
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
phoggie, did you have custom made cabs? Sometimes you'll need a filler with certain cabs because they come in set widths and you might end up with a inch or so on a run over what your cabinets widths total up to. If you have a 50" run and the cabs you want only come in 24" widths, you can have 2 cabs at that width and 2" left over... if you used a 36" cab and a 14" cab to equal the 50" you most likely could run into the problem (if they butt up to a corner) where one drawer won't open but a few inches before crashing into the handle on the first cab of the adjoining run. or the stove or dw handle.

And sometimes the length of the run will still have an inch or so over what your cabinet widths add up to, so they might put a half inch filler on each end. Things like that just pop up when attempting to 'fit' the cabs into a certain amount of space one has to use.

my goodness - everything I typed above came up underlined in red when I hit 'enter'!

some of the cabinet lines only use preset sizes like 9, 12, 15, 22, 24 inches wide etc. you've gotta do something with that odd inch here and there.
Shades_of_idaho
8 years ago
We we had our cabinets refaced with real wood and not the manufactured home stuff we needed a filler in a corner. Of course we did not get it because it was re-facing not custom building. So we took the drawer knobs off. I can easily open the drawers with my finger tips with out the nobs. I think I do that with most of the other drawers any way. LOL

LOVE your kitchen Nancy and remember you doing all of this. Such a big project and it turned out Beautifully.
Nancy in Mich
8 years ago
Chris, I STILL have one cupboard door that I have to sand and stain, five years after we did the kitchen. It was missing when we finished doing the doors and drawer fronts (we took a lot longer to do all of them than Jim did to do the rest of the kitchen). It turns out that Jim had it in his shop and found it a few months later. It has been in our garage ever since. I keep planning on doing the work on it every time I clean up the garage and run into it. Meanwhile, we have one upper cupboard that has never had a door! We also are missing a few pieces of base molding that Jim never did on the sides of the island for some reason. We never put any stain or poly on the back side of the island, either. Then the kneehole of the desk needs the same base molding and some sanding and staining of an area of wood putty. I guess this is why I should always hire things done> I am not good at finishing projects!
Shades_of_idaho
8 years ago
We also have a corner on the cabinet refacing that needs trim o it. No idea why he did not do it and I keep forgetting to buy a piece of it. So simple. I understand putting things off. And then when you finally do get them done it is like WHY did I wait so long???

General question: Where are fillers needed?

Nancy in Mich

Comments (8)

desertsteph

phoggie

Related Discussions

llucy
Original Author

desertsteph

Shades_of_idaho

Nancy in Mich

Shades_of_idaho

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

General question: Where are fillers needed?

Nancy in Mich

Comments (8)

desertsteph

phoggie

Related Discussions

llucyOriginal Author

desertsteph

Shades_of_idaho

Nancy in Mich

Shades_of_idaho

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

llucy
Original Author