42" Base Blind Corner Cabinet - Momplex Vanilla Kitchen

Moving down the line of cabinets today!

You got a little sneak peek of how we built a base cabinet for the other corner of the Momplex Vanilla kitchen in our drawer installation post  - 

Unlike the other side where we had lots of room for a big 36" pie cut lazy susan base cabinet, on the right side of the range, there really wasn't room for much of anything in that corner.  

But we didn't want to waste any precious storage space either ...

But at the same time, we wanted the two cabinets flanking the range to be symmetrical in appearance.

What to do???

We built a blind corner kitchen cabinet, of course!  That has the same drawers/doors as the 21" base cabinet to the left of the range for symmetry,

But is NOT the same on the inside -

It's actually double the size inside!

SIDE NOTE: Don't you love that prefinished PureBond plywood inside?  Yep, no reaching inside to paint!  

It is in fact so big, you will need a pint sized helper to adjust the shelves. 

That is, if you are looking "ready to pop" (yes, that's a direct quote) preggers.  

Otherwise, I'm sure you'd fit just fine.

We could have actually went even bigger inside, but I started stressing that too deep of a blind corner would become a black hole for all the appliances and gadgets that looked so life changing on tv ... and then really only got used once.  

You know what I'm talking about.  

The blind corner cabinet is really just a base cabinet with a funny face frame.  But there are a few things to consider when building:

- Depending on the way your doors will swing or if you have any drawers, you will need filler strips (recommended at least 3" on either side of the corner).  For the blind corner itself, we built the filler strip in by using a 1x6 in the center of the face frame.  This also gives us quite a bit of wiggle room for adjusting the overall run of the cabinets.

- Shelves start sagging (depending on the material it could be more or less) at about 36" in span.  So if you are building a 48" blind corner, you'll need to reinforce that shelf somewhere in the center.

- If you are using a blind corner hardware shelving kit, order it first and build your cabinet to suit the kit.

- If your blind corner doesn't extend all the way to the wall, make sure you add a cleat to support the countertop on the wall itself.

- Because walls in kitchens aren't always perfectly square and because walls aren't normally a factor of 3" exactly, use the blind corner as an adjustment cabinet so you don't have to throw filler strips in later.  When we installed the cabinets, we started at the other corner, worked our way down, and whatever was leftover was left blank in the corner.  A word of caution though - make sure your cabinets on the other side cover the blind corner opening.

So let's dive in and get building on that blind corner cabinet!!!

RECOMMENDED: Please read this post on building base cabinets before tackling this plan.