Kitchens have evolved to meet our ever-changing needs, and so have cabinets! The Base Under Counter Microwave Cabinet and Base Integrated Under Counter Microwave Cabinet (BUCM and BIUCM) are great options to put your microwave into your kitchen island or other base cabinet instead of over your stovetop and oven. This popular cabinet option allows easier microwave access for kids and for those preparing for aging in place. It also gives you the ability to open up your floor plan and eliminate some walls or wall cabinets! Please feel free to reach out to your Cabinet Coach with any questions about configurations, or enjoy using this option to envision your dream kitchen!
Video Transcript
[Music] Hey everybody Brian from Cabinet Joint here.
We're going to talk about under counter microwave options. This is not an assembly video: this will assemble like any other base cabinet we have. It's just the drawers at the bottom instead of the top. This is really just to talk about the features and benefits of this cabinet because it's used so often.
For kitchens these days, people are taking out wall space and trying to open up their floor plans to expose the kitchen to the living room or the dining room, and so there's less wall to work with. So we are now forced to try to put things that used to be in wall cabinets into base cabinets, and your microwave traditionally was either built in into a wall cabinet or a tall oven cabinet, or it was part of a range hanging over your stove. And the microwave hung there with lights at the bottom. People are now moving the microwave into the island or into their base cabinets, that way their kids can microwave popcorn without having to climb on the countertop. There's lots of reasons for it, but it has gotten more and more popular to put microwaves into base cabinets. A lot of them are even drawer microwaves where the microwave opens as a drawer and the controls are across the top. I know sharp and Panasonic and some other manufacturers make those. So for cabinet manufacturers like Conestoga have been forced to try to build cabinets or can come up with cabinets that will accommodate these built-in units or sliding units. So we want to talk today about two cabinets Conestoga offers.
One is called a base integrated under counter microwave: “B-I-UCM.” And the other one is a base under counter microwave, which is “B-U-C-M.” The BIUCM is the one you see before me, here, and it's got a trimmable face plate where you can trim this out to match whatever the spec is on your microwave. You're going to want to get some counsel from your cabinet coach to make sure you order a cabinet big enough to accommodate the cutout you're going to need to do. You may even want to order a custom front frame where your sales rep or cabinet coach can order the frame with the cutout already done if you know what your spec is.
The other one - the BUCM - is just like this except the front frame is inch and a half material all the way around, and the cabinet literally sets on a smooth floor of the cabinet and you see space all the way around. the integrated one, as you see here, is meant to have a trim kit from the microwave. We'll cover up the cut edge, and so you slide it in, and the trim kit butts right up against the the wood. And looks nice and clean. Tthe other one you're going to see the gap around the microwave if it's not a form-fitting microwave. They both have a drawer below. So it just depends on what microwave you choose is going to drive which cabinet you use.
A couple things to be mindful of:
if you are using the base under counter microwave and you don't have the trim kit and your microwave setting in place, the interior of the cabinet is not finished to match. It's just this blonde birch maple material. So if you have a dark finish like a dark paint or a dark stain, you put your stainless steel microwave in and it only fills the opening to there, on a bigger cabinet, for instance you're going to see two three inches of space around it; you can see in there, you can see that there's no top to the cabinet. You may want to consider things like a dust lid instead of spreader strips. Your sales rep can order a dust lid which would replace the spreader strips and create a an actual top.
You may also want to think about the matching interior option where the inside would then match the outside, and so any gaps or whatever you won't see.
Some other things people have done is ordered fillers to go behind on the BUCM; ordered fillers to go behind to close the opening in behind and at least close in the left and right side of the opening and allow the microwave to breathe at the top. There's different ways to to get out the look you're after and your cabinet coach can help you with that.
This cabinet's available up to 36 inches wide, so 24” to 36” nothing smaller nothing bigger and you can go from 31.5” high to 42” high.
Now one thing to be mindful of is as the cabinet gets bigger, what changes is this opening. So this drawer is always going to stay fixed. If you go to a 42 inch cabinet, this is going to be a really big tall opening. So you're going to want to think about that if you're doing an integrated under counter microwave. You may want to talk to your cabinet coach about doing more like a custom-size case-only cabinet with a front frame, just the way you want it.
So things to be mindful of if you do the BIUCM, you're going to get these little runners. So that when you do the cutout, these can act as the floor on which you slide your cabinet in. You can trim them down if need be, if you're going lower than they are. They sit about an inch below that, but if you need to go all the way down to there, you can run those through a table saw and trim them down. The goal is to have those be smooth with the opening so you can slide your integrated microwave in on those runners and you'll be you'll be good to go. Iit does have a full back. You'll need to cut out for your electrical outlet, so if you're going to do electrical on the back or the floor or the side, you have to mount or, you know, figure out where that is and cut a hole in it. It's not like our oven cabinets or tall oven cabinets where there is no back and you can put your electric anywhere. You are going to have to cut out for your electrical panel or your electrical outlet box in the back of that cabinet.
So if you have any questions your cabinet coach can give you a hand. It’s a great versatile cabinet. Some people have done coffee makers in these. They've done all sorts of things with these. They call them microwave cabinets but there's other uses. So always open up your horizons and look at cabinets as another storage option that you can use the opening to do something else besides just a microwave.
If you have any questions, give us a call 888-211-6482
Thanks a lot!
