For years we tried a number of combinations involving kitchen composting bins, trash cans and recycling bins and all seemed awkward to use. One day I decided an Under Kitchen Sink combination bin might be the answer. After building version one, we knew within hours this was easily the best solution, the next step would be motivating Colin to build version 2 with a few small upgrades ...
And here it is and my wife can't stop commenting on how handy it is for her ... she loves it ...
In our house, we share the meal cooking back and forth .. often for weeks at a time and when it's my sessions, I always find it cumbersome to try to sort out the trash from the recycling and the composting refuse. We have tried a variety of on counter, floor space and undersink combinations and none really seemed all that easy to use. Of course one problem we have is the dish washer is RIGHT beside the sink, which is not that handy when needed to scape dishes into the composting bin ... one day I came up with an under sink version and built a "beta" version, which worked very well for a few years, but we both knew there were things that I could do to improve it ... all I needed was some inspiration and a bit of time.
For this build plywood was the perfect wood and in the Version #1 I used 3/4" plywood, which was fine, very strong but quite heavy. I learned from that so in this last version I found 1/2 Baltic Birch worked as well as the thicker plywood.
The first step was to build a large "sled" that I could mount to the cabinet base which would hold the full extension soft close drawer mounts. They needed to mounted in such a way that sliding part could be removed if needed and that part was fairly simple. I just needed cut some hard, straight wood strips that would sever and the sides for the metal drawer extensions then mount the sliding base on top of the fixed bottom base.
It sounds easy when you say it, but it did take a bit of fiddling around, measuring and testing to get all the parts in the right places and working smoothly.
Once the base was made I needed to build the super structure that would hold the trash and composting bins. I wanted both of them easy to access and easy to remove, but since the composting bin is easily the most used, it needed to be up front and elevated. This feature made it easy to install a removable tray underneath for hold spare trash bags and special decomposing composting bags.
In the first version of this sliding drawer I swapped the door hand to horizontal which makes it much easier to pull put and and unique stype of door handle mounting for convience rather than looks, but most people don't even notice until it comes time to use it, then they love the rearrangement.
The mounting of this sliding trash and composting drawer is easy. All I did was attach the front of cabinet (after aligning it) then postion the whole unit as though it were closed. This left a tiny bit of room between the inside of the cabinet door and cabinet it'self. Next I drove a screw into the back of the sliding drawer base to hold it in place from moving, then slid the slider part out and proceeded to drive in 3 more screws into the base and it was done.
After a couple of days use we decided the lid on the composting bin did not need to be there and it was removed ... for the final alteration and whole thing just came together like magic. A real pleasure now to work in the kitchen, baking and preparing meals ...
Copyright Colin Knecht
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