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Under my kitchen sink, I'm installing a floor mounted sliding shelf, so that I can slide out the trash instead of reaching underneath.

The cabinet doors are swing-mounted, and I can't change this without changing the hardware (for instance, replacing the knob/pull with a pull bar), because it would mess up the finish. So I can't mount the door on the face of the slider, so that the door and shelf slide out as one unit.

I would like to make it so that when you swing open the cabinet door, some internal hardware pulls open the shelf, but I can't find any hardware that would do this. Is there such a thing?

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  • Do you need the shelf to extend fully, or just pop out a bit so you can grab it from there?
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Jan 5, 2020 at 16:00
  • Ideally it would come out as far as the radius/swing of the door.
    – Joshua Frank
    Jan 5, 2020 at 18:36
  • Most trash doors are mounted to the pull out the trash can is in. Would that work? If so that would keep the cost down. To do what you ask, if available would be considerably more when found
    – Jack
    Jan 5, 2020 at 21:08
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    You can have the door slide open (attached to the sliding shelf) without changing the cabinet hardware. "False doors" with the seemingly incorrect hardware are pretty common to provide visual consistency even if the doors don't all open the same way.
    – JPhi1618
    Jan 6, 2020 at 15:23

2 Answers 2

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I've figured out how. Made this small video: https://youtu.be/KZa9JXqgABA

Ps:You can use u-groove pulleys to guide the cord to direct and use the arc of the swing to pull the drawer out. I'm planning to make a couple small enhancements to this setup to make it a bit smoother.

Edit: As promised, attached is a diagram that illustrates the idea. Lmk if you have any questions.

pull-out-tray-swinging-door

Correction in the image: I don't think the idea to use another pulley to hide the cable will work.

The purpose of the retractable id badge holder is to be able to open the door half way and not actually engage the tray yet... You can purchase a heavy duty one with steel cord instead of the cheap nylon ones...

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    Nice. You could improve this answer by including some pictures, diagrams or at least some explanation of how you made it work. Best to avoid answers that are just links to external resources.
    – Carl
    Oct 17, 2022 at 11:19
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    Also, there's no need (nor use) in trying to @ ping someone from an answer. The OP is automatically notified of all answers. Please take the tour to learn more about how this site is different from other sites. Agreed, though, that this is, effectively, a link-only answer without drawings or descriptions of how your contraption works. Sadly, YT can and does take down videos which would leave this answer completely useless in another 3 years (or 15 minutes...)
    – FreeMan
    Oct 17, 2022 at 11:37
  • Cool. Will try to add some drawings to explain my solution and call out tradeoffs.
    – SvS
    Oct 18, 2022 at 7:10
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    That's actually pretty clever!
    – FreeMan
    Oct 19, 2022 at 13:41
  • Thanks 🙂 I hope this is useful for at least a few people.
    – SvS
    Oct 19, 2022 at 16:27
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With a swinging door, the door needs to be open all the way before the drawer can begin to slide. Therfore, you can't use the action of opening the door to open the drawer. Unless you modify the drawer, which I don't think would be practical, what your asking can't be done. (I wanted to do the same thing.)

You can attach the drawer to the back of the door, like a spice rack on the back of a door, just be careful about the width/depth of the drawer that they account for the arc swing of the back of the drawer.

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