Kitchen Tools: Roll-Out Your Bottom Drawers

My Revere Ware is now within reach.

We live in an 1896 Victorian cross-gable house with numerous quirks, including a pint-sized powder room and an upstairs hallway shaped like the Big Dipper. There are many lovely features, too, including stained glass bay window insets and a beautiful carved front door.

My kitchen is not fancy, nor has in been renovated in years. That's the way I like it, having loved antiques since my teen years. Still, sometimes I yearn for a few "modern conveniences."


For many years, I wanted an "appliance garage," to rid my countertops of clutter. I never got one, and now I'm happy about that; one would probably have taken up more space than it would have freed.

But rolling bottom shelves was something we never had and more often than not, when we needed to find an item on those bottom shelves, we would invariably find it in the back, which either involved lying flat on the floor or displacing a hip.

So my husband, an avid do-it-yourselfer, built rolling shelves with rolling brackets he found online. Now I can reach my vintage Revere Ware and 1950-era Pyrex and Anchor Hocking ware without risking bodily injury.

During the construction process, I stayed out of the way as much as possible. He shuttled between garage and basement and made a few trips to the hardware store. One rolling shelf insert has been installed and a second is underway.

It's good to have an engineer in the house.