Super Secret Toekick Drawer for Kitchen Cabinet

IKEA kitchen cabinet with toe kick drawer

Materials: Ikea Rationell drawer kit, Strecket pull

Description: I’m about as puffed up as a peacock at my recent Ikea hack. A broken oven the week before Christmas snowballed into a complete kitchen remodel, and we considered Ikea kitchen cabinets. We ultimately went with another vendor, but I couldn’t get those Ikea drawers out of my mind. So nice and sturdy. Such a lovely soft close. I coveted.

And then I stumbled across the idea of a toekick drawer. You know toekicks–the recessed bit of wood under your cabinets, just covering up dead space. Why? Why should those just be dead space? When they could be transformed into a drawer?

Enter Rationell, the drawer kit from Ikea. All the innards for a nice drawer, conveniently packaged and available for separate sale and ready for me to re-purpose to my own ends.

IKEA kitchen cabinet with toe kick drawer

I go into more detail on my blog, but essentially, I used a Rationell kit one size smaller than my base cabinet, then cut 2x4s down to size to fill in the dead space, and mounted the Rationell drawer below the normal cabinet, in the toekick area.

IKEA kitchen cabinet with toe kick drawer

IKEA kitchen cabinet with toe kick drawer

IKEA kitchen cabinet with toe kick drawer

The toekick board became the front panel of the drawer, and the sleek design of the Strecket pull was the perfect finishing touch–it made opening the drawer easy, but its top-mount design meant that you couldn’t see it unless you were flat on my kitchen floor. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen on occasion, but it’s rare. 😉

Ikea made it possible! For an extra $30ish dollars, I added an entire extra drawer to my base cabinet. I shudder to imagine what it would have cost had I been working with a custom cabinet-maker.

See more of the secret cabinet.

~ Nicole Wills, United States