Kitchen storage solutions and pantry joinery, specified before a cabinet is cut.

Storage is the part of a kitchen you feel every morning and almost never see in a photograph. Inserts, pull-outs, carousels and bin systems change the size and the build of the cabinet that holds them, so they belong in the drawing and in the written scope — not in a conversation with the installer on the day the joinery lands.

No obligation

Reference photograph — a tall pull-out pantry unit, accessible from both sides of the runner

The storage schedule

Ten systems that appear as separate line items in a cabinetry scope, each with a cost and a carcass consequence.

01 Deep drawer banks with pot and pan inserts Runners

02 Cutlery and utensil insert sets Joinery

03 Corner carousels and magic corners Hardware

04 Pull-out pantry units, 300–600mm Hardware

05 Walk-in and butler’s pantry fit-out Joinery

06 Overhead lift-up and bi-fold doors Hardware

07 Integrated bin and recycling systems Hardware

08 Appliance garages and roller shutters Joinery

09 Toe-kick drawers under base runs Joinery

10 Tall units with internal drawers Joinery

Reference photograph — a drawer bank set out so cutlery, crockery and cookware each hold their own depth

Storage follows habits, not floor area.

Two households in the same Murrumbeena floor plan need different joinery. A family that cooks from dry goods every night wants a pull-out pantry within a step of the cooktop and deep drawers for pots. A household that entertains wants glassware and platters off the working bench entirely, behind a butler’s door. The floor area is identical; the schedule is not.

So the conversation starts with routine rather than product. What is used daily and must sit at hand height. What is heavy and belongs in a drawer rather than overhead. What is bulky, seasonal and can live high. Where the bin needs to be so scraps travel the shortest distance from board to lid. Those answers set drawer depths, unit widths and the number of internal dividers — and they set them early, because every one of them changes the carcass.

A Pull-out pantry

A single tall unit on heavy-duty runners, reached from both sides, usually 300mm to 600mm wide. The best answer where wall space is short and no floor can be given away.

Suits — compact plans

B Tall unit, internal drawers

Doors on the outside, drawers behind them. Nothing is lost at the back of a deep shelf, and the drawer fronts stay hidden when the doors close on a run of flat joinery.

Suits — dry goods

C Walk-in pantry

A small room with shelving and, where it earns its place, a low bench. Needs a door swing and roughly a square metre of plan that the kitchen would otherwise use for cabinetry.

Suits — larger homes

D Butler’s pantry

A working second bench with its own sink, power and often the second oven. Carries plumbing and electrical scope, so it is decided at design rather than added later.

Suits — open-plan rear extensions

Where storage is decided in the build

Inserts are hardware, and hardware is manufacturing information. Four stages of the twelve-step renovation process settle it, all of them before any board is cut.

01 Consultation — how the kitchen is used, what is stored, what currently has no home Stage 01

02 Measure — wall lengths, ceiling height and door swings that decide which units physically fit Stage 02

03 Design — drawer heights, insert positions and internal divisions drawn unit by unit Stage 03

04 Materials — runner, hinge and insert brands named in the order, not chosen on site Stage 05

By the cabinetry stage the storage is already built into the units, which is why retro-fitting a carousel or a bin system afterwards rarely sits as cleanly as one drawn in from the start.

Five questions worth answering before we draw

A What sits on the bench now only because there is nowhere else for it?

B Which cupboard do you have to kneel down and reach into?

C How many people work in the kitchen at once, and do they cross paths?

D Should the bin be beside the sink, the board, or both?

E Which appliances stay out, and which should disappear behind a door?

Bring those answers — describing in a sentence or two what the cupboards hold now, and what frustrates you about reaching it, tells us more than a measurement — and the storage schedule writes itself during design. Write it into the message when you send an enquiry through the contact form or start a quote enquiry; if photographs would help, we will ask for them by reply.

Tell us what the kitchen has to hold.

Send your suburb, the kitchen type and what you want stored where. We work across Murrumbeena, Carnegie, Hughesdale, Oakleigh, Chadstone, Malvern East, Bentleigh East, Ormond and McKinnon.

No obligation