Kitchen cabinet upgrades can add up quickly so when designing your kitchen space, make sure any upgrades are worth the expense.

When we built our first house, we were so young and just went with a very simple and very inexpensive pre-designed house plan. We didn’t really have many choices when it came to design or finishes. I think we got to pick from a very small sample of carpet, linoleum (yes linoleum, I still cringe thinking about it) and the color of the woodwork and walls. 

I certainly didn’t have a choice when it came to the design of our cabinets…..in any room. So when we were re-working the design of our kitchen for the remodel, I thought long and hard about what worked and didn’t work in the previous kitchen and implemented those things into the new kitchen.

Now, let me preface this to say, I am known as the Queen of being over budget so while these kitchen cabinet upgrades can add up fast if you are doing brand new cabinets, there are ways to DIY most of these after the fact. So if you just want to make your current kitchen set up more efficient, these “upgrades” will work for you too and can be done over time.

5 Must Have Kitchen Cabinet Upgrades

Drawers would be my number one cabinet upgrade suggestion. Drawers are not something you can easily add after the fact so if you are designing a new kitchen, be sure to add lots of drawers. They are so versatile when it comes to storage. It will not be a decision you will regret.

I asked for as many drawers as possible (shallow and deep drawers) and have specific drawers for my pots and pans under the cook top and plenty of drawers for all of my cooking utensils, gadgets and flatware.

 

If drawers aren’t an option for you, pull-outs are the next best thing. Have you ever felt like you had to crawl into a cabinet to try to get something from the very back? Pull-outs can eliminate back breaking searches for those kitchen tools that you use maybe a couple times per year. Ask your cabinet maker about options for pull-outs or if you are just looking to make your cabinets more efficient, you can build or purchase pull-outs to install yourself. 

Vertical storage is a very efficient way to store things like cookie sheets and cutting boards. How do you store things like baking dishes, platters and cookie sheets? Do you have to stack them? How big a pain is it when you need that thing that’s at the very bottom of the stack? If you have a taller cabinet in your kitchen (like above your refrigerator), it would be fairly easy to add some dividers to create vertical storage. When designing our kitchen, vertical storage was on my must have list and is right above my oven & microwave. Vertical storage makes it so much easier to grab cookie sheets and cutting boards when you need them quickly.

 

Spice pull-outs are an extremely handy way to store and organize your spices. They are probably more of a luxury or splurge than a must have but boy are they handy! If you are doing new cabinets, my suggestion would be to implement them into your cabinetry around your cook top. Not planning on new cabinets any time soon? There are several options for spice storage such as pull down spice racks, or spice pull-outs.

 

Hidden storage to hide unsightly necessities will not only hide the ugliness but create more space in your space. In our previous house we installed the tip-out trays in the faux drawer under our sink in the kitchen. I loved having a place to store sink stoppers, the dish wand and other items so much that I decided to put them under every sink in the new house. With these tip-out trays I’ve eliminated the need for those unsightly toothbrush holders and the dish wands & scrub brushes that used to sit out on the counter or in the sink. 

Another hidden storage option is a trash drawer or pull-out. However, when talking to your cabinet builder, be sure he uses a heavy duty drawer glide for a trash drawer as trash cans can get pretty heavy when full. 

So those are my favorite and must have upgrades for any kitchen. Am I missing any? What would you add?

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