When you walk into someone’s home and their cabinets fit perfectly from wall to wall and miraculously flow around appliances with ease to form one seamless design…that is all thanks to cabinet filler! While not its only use, cabinet filler is an important one. Let’s break down what cabinet filler does, along with its uses to see if it is something that you need in your home.
Cabinet fillers are pieces of wood that match the front of your cabinetry. They are usually around 3-4 inches wide and are the same height as your cabinets. Seems pretty simple, but why would you need such a thing?
Spacing
When spacing out cabinets, there are occasional gaps where the cabinets don’t meet each other. In short: one person designed the home itself and a second person designed the cabinetry for the space. These people may never have a conversation!
So, when designing a space, depending on what you’re working with, the allotted space isn’t exactly down-to-the-inch perfect for the exact number of cabinets. Rather than have a 2-inch gap between sections* (*read: cabinet doors), a filler piece would be installed. Filler pieces can be added as many or as few times as necessary. They aid in creating a seamless design that is much more pleasing to the eye. No one wants gaps between doors of the cabinetry!
Doors
Cabinets that are next to each other with opposing opening directions can potentially result in the cabinet doors banging into one another if opened simultaneously. Rather than risk the dings, dents, chips, and scratches that will likely occur on the surface of the cabinet doors and hardware, you can opt to include a filler piece between the cabinets. The extra space between the sections allows enough room for both doors to open and not interact, keeping the smacking and the damage to a minimum.
Appliance Fitting
Occasionally there are times when the kitchen appliances do not fit perfectly within the cabinet breaks made for them. If the appliance is too large for the space, I cannot help you there. But if the appliance is smaller or shorter at all, we have just the trick to fix it! You guessed it, cabinet filler. There is nothing worse than the abyss between appliances to catch all the food crumbs, cat toys, milk jug rings, and dog hair, right? Wrong! Cover that up with filler! Framing out the appliances with filler can be a lovely way to not only keep the design flow, but it can offer you a solution to your appliance gaps.
While cabinet fillers may be on the list of least exciting cabinet things, they can be helpful and come in extremely handy when achieving the seamless look you are working so hard to achieve. Whether you’re making up for cabinet gaps, protecting opening doors, or making up for some bonus inches next to the fridge, cabinet filler can fill the hole in your plan that you need.
Any home project can start to feel overwhelming, whether its a new garage addition with built-in storage, or new custom cabinets for your kitchen. But at Latham we are here with you every step of the way! From start to finish our team will walk you through the design, build, and installation processes until project completion.
