Corner Cabinet Lazy Susan Installation
I got a call from a customer whose kitchen had just been installed. This kitchen, mind you, has been going on forever. Between me dropping the ball, the customer disappearing (vacation), holidays, manufacturer lead time, and I can’t remember what else, she had a nice new Bertch kitchen. Remington doors with a Fawn finish. Beautimus.
Anyway, her kitchen got installed, and she called a couple days after the dust had settled. “Where’s my lazy susan,” she wanted to know. My usual response would have been “Try looking in the corner cabinet,” but this customer is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, so I knew she wasn’t pulling my leg. After checking the plan, I saw that I’d ordered a regular square corner cabinet, meaning that there were no lazy susans for her corner cabinet.
I called Bertch. They said “If you can get it in before the countertop people…” which wasn’t happening. We were using a new crew on this kitchen because their lead time was a week from template to install, rather than 4 weeks from the company we usually hire. I was forwarded along to some guy in Bertch R&D.
The gentleman promptly laughed at me, said it’s possible to get this done, and asked if I were skinny. Oh man… I will say that I find comfort in talking with other smart aleks, for some strange reason, but I was still a bit nervous. By the end of the conversation though, we had nailed down what it was I needed to order and I had a rough idea of how these things get installed after the fact. We agreed to talk again once the lazy susan shelves arrived.
Well, they showed up a week or so later. I called Bertch again, ran the gauntlet to R&D, got my guy again, and received further instructions. Things were a little more encouraging this time. He said he’d done it, it takes a couple hours, and that his language during the install would have made a sailor blush. He also said to block up the first shelf I install, rather than use shelf pegs, or I’d get a quick and painful blow to the head.
I’m happy to say that after minimal injury to myself, I got the lazy susan shelves into the customer’s corner cabinet. Here’s how the whole thing works…
 |
 |
This is a close up from the top. The bottom hole is in the center of the lazy susan shelf, and the top hole is what lines up with where the red arrows point. Installing the revolving shelf entails getting the shelf centered and set back a bit from the door, then getting screws into the four holes.
Step one was to get the lazy susans in, but this entailed getting the shelf that was already in the cabinet out of my way. The pegs that came in the cabinet don’t like to let go, and I broke a couple getting the shelf out of them. The shelf won’t come out of the cabinet, so I had to hold it up top while I rolled one susan in. With the first susan in and on the floor of the cabinet, I could then rest the shelf on that so that I could roll the second susan in above that.
This didn’t work so well at first; I had to take the two pieces of wood off the front (the mouth part, if you think of the lazy susan as Pac Man) before I could fit it in. I also dented these pieces of wood up a bit before I realized it; Bertch sent three lazy susans though, so if the customer wants me to (I showed her) I can swap them out.
Step two was to get a lazy susan installed, and the first one was the top. This was fairly easy, since I had so much headroom (remember that the shelf was down near the floor of the cabinet) but I found it difficult to squeeze my torso into the cabinet. I got used to doing this though, as I kept forgetting screws, a flashlight, or tools just out of reach and had to keep exiting the cabinet to fetch them.
The first screw went in fine. Now was the tricky part I’d been warned about. I pressed down on the lazy susan shelf and spun it carefully. The trick is to just spin the wooden part of the shelf, and not the metal part that screws down. One way to solve the problem would be to put a screw in the center hole, but that was more holes than I wanted in the shelf, so I didn’t. I spun it a quarter turn and got the next screw in. A quarter more for the third screw would have been great, but I realized that the lazy susan shelf was set too far back into the corner cabinet itself, so I had to unscrew everything and start over. Did I mention that I haven’t done this before?
To get the rotating part situated again, I grabbed the metal and spun it until I felt the catch, meaning that this is the lazy susan at rest. There’s the “stop” position, which is where the shelf would be (rotation-wise) when the corner cabinet door is closed. It was at this stage in the game that I noticed odd marks on things, all over the place.
It turns out that the inner edge of the rotating part is a bit sharper than I thought. The marks were red, and coming from my fingers. Be very careful installing these things, and make sure that you’ve had tetanus shots beforehand, I guess.
The upside is that I never felt a thing.
Moving the shelf forward and re-screwing worked fine. Getting it up off the floor turned out to be just as fun as my friend in Bertch R&D said it would be. I did end up using shelf pegs, but I don’t think I did any worse than if I’d blocked it up. It never cracked my skull even once.
The bottom shelf went pretty much the same as the top one, except I had WAY less room to move around, for NOW I had to fit not under the top of the cabinet, but under a lazy susan shelf halfway up. Being claustrophobic makes this tons more interesting, and installing these on a hot day livens things up even more. I did get it done though, finally, and the whole process took about two and a half hours. Being able to set the corner cabinet up on a bench would have made it easier, but ordering the damned thing correctly in the first place would have been the best idea.
Good luck to anyone who needs it, should they decide to stick a lazy susan in a corner cabinet after the fact.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Leave a comment
Other Organization Articles
-
Drawers For Kitchen Cabinets
Drawers for kitchen cabinets are built in a variety of ways. Patricleboard drawers, plywood drawers, solid wood drawers, dovetail drawers… There are all sorts of choices when it comes to drawers for kitchen cabinets. You get what you pay for.
Kitchen Cabinet Organizers: What to do with a 33 Inch Base
Kitchen cabinet organizers come in a variety of styles for a plethora of different types of cabinets. Here are a couple of thinkgs I’m thinking about for my own kitchen.
Corner Cabinet Lazy Susan Installation
I made the mistake recently of ordering a regular corner cabinet for a customer, when what she wanted was a corner cabinet with a lazy susan. I fixed her up once all of the parts came in, but it was a bit of a job.
