We dadoe the bottoms for strength. By cutting a 9/32 inch groove into the sidewalls, inserting and gluing the bottoms into this groove, it ties the whole kitchen drawer together. Also, on kitchen rollouts 25" and larger, it allows an area underneath of the bottom to add a strengthening  board to reduce sagging. We have seen kitchen pull outs that use a 1/4" board that is surface mounted to the bottom and over the years, this bottom will sag.

Also, if you surface mount the bottom, you have to attach the glides with screws in the bottom rather than from the side. When this screw is inserted into the bottom, it splits the ply's apart on the sidewalls unless you drill pilot holes (which no one does). If you see a kitchen shelf advertised as being 2 5/8" tall this is a clue that the shelf sidewall is actually 2 3/8" tall and they are counting the 1/4" bottom that they are surface mounting to the sidewalls. These shelves are usually also butt jointed. This is the worst way to build a pull out shelf that will get daily use. These shelves are usually only warranted for a couple years.

What about mounting a 1/2" bottom and forgetting about the dadoe joint?

The 1/4" mdf bottom that we use will hold more weight than the drawer slides are rated and being able to dadoe them makes the total drawer stronger. Why would anyone surface mount the bottom to a drawer? If you use 1/2" particle board, you just added additional unnecassry weight to the drawer slides that have a weight load rating, meaning you just took away the total weight you can put in the drawer. Also, consider that when the bottom is surface mounted and 3/4 extension drawer slides are used, the drawer slide will hold the outside edges of the bottom the the drawer sides. But what about the front and back? Adding and subtracting weight from a drawer that has a bottom surface mounted is the same as bouncing on a bed, eventually (and not that far away) the springs loosen up and you have a sagging mattress ( or shelf bottom in this case

Dovetail joinery is a strong method of joining the sidewalls together and gives excellent front to back pulling strength. But dovetail joinery has limitations on side to side strength. If your assembling dresser drawers that will have only the pressure of a pair of socks or t-shirts against the sides, it works great. Most roll out shelves on the market today advertising dovetail joints, are typically what is called a blind dovetail. This type of dovetail will give you a clean front because the pins on the dovetail go half way through the front stock. This dovetail method is the weakest of dovetails. We have had several distributors of another company purchase our pull out shelfs because they were tired of having to re-glue the sidewalls.

A rabbet joint along with pneumatically inserted brad nails,glue, and a dadoed in bottom gives us the desired side to side strength and the front to back pulling strength.

If we were to rate the installation of our kitchen rollout shelves with a degree of difficulty from 1-10 with 10 being the most difficult. These kitchen roll outs would be a 1 1/2  in degree of difficulty. The first Kitchen Slide out Shelf that you install will usually take the longest, then you will see how easy it is to install these kitchen pull outs. And with our mounting hardware the installation is even simpler. We have an installation page here to help you along the way also. It may seem very involved because of all the wording, but when its condensed down to the actual installation application, you'll be amazed at simple it actually is. Typically, it will take about 5 minutes per shelf.

Delivery:  You can normally expect your new kitchen pull out shelving to be constructed within 2 business days of ordering them. This is why orders cannot be cancelled or refunds offered after the order has been placed, Please ask questions prior to ordering. Then depending on where you live, it will be 2-7 days for the shipping time.

Shipping Discounts : On orders of 75 shelves or more we can usually save shipping costs by pallet shipping

We only offer fair shipping

 Please keep in mind that Ups has two weight factors in shipping costs, actual weight and dimensional weight. Since most products we produce fall into the dimensional weight column because of the box sizes required UPS charges higher rates to ship these packages.

For example: 2- 3/12 tall shelves, 22wide x 22 deep weigh approx 22 lbs, but they would need to be shipped in a 24x24x12 box, so UPS would calculate this as dimensional weight using the calculation of 24x24x12=6912 divided by 194=35.62 or 36 shipping pounds for 22 actual weight

The only way that a business can offer free or discounted shipping is to have the cost adjusted in Merchandise Margins.

We could offer for example a flat $7.00 per item shipping cost but then we would have to mark our product price up to cover the actual difference.

There is no  business that sells a product with a $2.00 profit margin with free shipping that actually costs $2.50 to ship

The simple answer is nothing. These describe the same product but people call them different names