Built-In Kitchen Step Stool

Our new kitchen might be on the smaller side, but our countertops are on the (much) taller side. As a family full of folks 6’ tall and over, we’ve spent countless hours stooping over sinks and hunched over cutting boards. But no more!

One of the greatest perks of designing our little cottage from scratch was the ability to design surfaces to better suit our needs (and ease our aches). However, we have two young children and wanted to be sure they’d retain the ability to reach faucets and handle essential items on their own as needed.

In consideration of this, we’ve worked a number of unique features into our interior, one of them being a space-saving, retractable step-stool at the soon-to-be-skirted kitchen sink.

We mentioned this concept to the wonderful carpenter who has been bringing our vision to life, and he further magicked it into this design. The stool is as wide as the sink (about 22”), and features two levels of tread.

The track keeps everything from sliding side to side, and we held on to the kids while they first tested it out so that they have a better understanding of how to climb up and down safely with the retractability in mind.

Our oldest is already a pro. Our youngest will take supervising for some time, but at her age that’s the case pretty much anywhere.

It’s a work in progress, of course, but within the next two weeks it should all be wrapped up and we’ll soon be moving in!