Declutter Your Kitchen Appliances With This Brilliant IKEA DIY

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Keeping your kitchen countertops clear of clutter can be an ongoing struggle that's made even more difficult by bulky appliances. Rice cookers, tea kettles, and air fryers all take up quite a bit of space that you could otherwise use for food preparation and cooking. However, you probably use these sorts of gadgets on a relatively frequent basis, so stowing them away in the back of your corner cabinets isn't really a good option either. One of the most practical solutions to keeping these appliances in an accessible, off-the-countertop location is to install an UTRUSTA pull-out work surface from IKEA on the inside of one of your cabinets. Although this might sound like a complex project, it's actually surprisingly conquerable. 

Using the UTRUSTA surface for appliance storage only requires a few simple steps. First, install the IKEA product's included slides along the bottom of the cabinet. Then, fit the worktop onto the rails, load it up with small appliances, and slide it into the cabinet. If you have outlet on the inside of the cabinet or along the wall nearby, there's no need to move the appliances to another location when using them. From both a visual and functional standpoint, this storage hack suits all sorts of kitchen design styles. In fact, it's up there amongst the best kitchen cabinet upgrades that will add value to your home.

To get started, you'll need to choose which of your cabinets will host your new appliance station, and clear it out. A cabinet with top-mounted, swing-up hinges rather than traditional vertical hinges is the ideal choice since it guarantees that the door and its hinges won't get in the way of the work surface when you slide it out. The cabinet you select should have a bottom of at least 24 inches by 24 inches because of the UTRUSTA's dimensions. If you have traditional hinges in the cabinet, the width of the cabinet might need to be 24 inches plus the thickness of the hinges when they're inside the cabinet.

Next, assemble the work surface according to the directions included in the package, up to the point where it directs you to attach the surface to your cabinet. Then, instead of attaching the worktop to a drawer front or the top of your cabinet, you should fit the drawer slides into the bottom of your selected cabinet, along the sides. However, if you have vertical hinges, or if your cabinet is wider than 24 inches, you'll need to fill the gap between the drawer slide and the cabinet's side wall by drilling in a fitted piece of finished wood. Creating this buffer with a vertical-hinge cabinet ensures that the pull-out surface stays clear of the hinges and doors and isn't too small for your cabinet. Use a tape measure to make sure that the slides are equally far back into the cabinet, and consider using a level to ensure that they're perfectly even as well.

Once you've installed the UTRUSTA's slides, you can clip the surface into place along the back hinges. You should now be able to slide your new appliance storage platform in and out of your cabinet without issue. And while you can definitely stop there, there are a few extra ways to upgrade the functionality of this storage solution. The first is to install an outlet in the back of the cabinet. To do this, you should hire a professional electrician, because they'll help ensure that your kitchen remains up to code. They'll need to cut a hole in the back of your cabinet for a new electrical box and run an electrical cable through the inside of your wall down to where the outlet's going to be. This is one of many electrical projects you shouldn't attempt at home unless you're a professional.

Another option for upgrading your new appliance cabinet is to paint the UTRUSTA's surface so that it matches the exterior color of your cabinets. You could also stick some battery-operated sensor lights, such as the DiDiSky Under Cabinet Lighting, on the inside of your appliance compartment along the top. That way, when you go to make a cup of tea after the sun's down, you won't have to turn on all of your kitchen's lights to see what you're doing. If UTRUSTA doesn't feel like a good fit for your space, there are lots of other ways to implement an appliance garage in your kitchen for less mess.