The upper that is all drawers, and why its four heights are what they are
Reviewed September 2026 · Captivating Cabinets
Four cabinets sit on this page and they are the strangest objects in the wall range: GN WD1848, WD1854, WD1857 and WD1860, 18 inches wide, 12 inches deep, and 48 to 60 inches tall, with a stacked run of drawers in them, from $796.25 to $926.25. An upper that is drawers instead of shelves is unusual enough. An upper five feet tall is stranger. Both oddities resolve the moment you do one piece of arithmetic, and that arithmetic tells you exactly where in the room this box is supposed to stand.
Forty-eight, fifty-four, fifty-seven, sixty
Those four numbers look like a random slice of a height ladder. They are not. The standard wall run in this line comes 30, 36, 39 and 42 inches tall, and it hangs on a line 54 inches off the floor — a 34½-inch counter, a countertop, and the 18-inch backsplash gap above it. Add 18 to each of the four upper heights and you get 48, 54, 57 and 60.
Which means this box was drawn to stand on the counter, not to hang beside the uppers. Set it on a 36-inch finished counter height and its top lands dead flush with the run next to it, every time, at whichever of the four heights you picked. No scribe, no filler above, no step in the top line. That is the whole design, and once you see it the cabinet stops being strange.
| Code | Height | Standing on a 36″ counter, tops out at | Flush with | Displayed price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GN WD1848 | 48″ | 84″ | a 30″ upper — GN W1830 | $796.25 |
| GN WD1854 | 54″ | 90″ | a 36″ upper — GN W1836 | $877.50 |
| GN WD1857 | 57″ | 93″ | a 39″ upper — GN W1839 | $880.75 |
| GN WD1860 | 60″ | 96″ | a 42″ upper — GN W1842 | $926.25 |
Note the third row. Three extra inches of cabinet costs $3.25 — $877.50 to $880.75 — which is the smallest step anywhere in this finish. If your run is 39 inches and you were going to make do with the 54, do not; the 57 is effectively free. The jump from 57 to 60 is a different matter at $45.50, and that one is a real decision about the ceiling.
Twelve inches of drawer is a different drawer
The depth is the constraint everything else follows from. A base drawer is 24 inches deep and swallows pans, lids, mixing bowls and a stack of plates. This one is 12, and once you subtract the box sides and the runners the usable front-to-back space is closer to ten. Nothing tall, nothing round, nothing heavy goes in here — and that is not a flaw, it is a category.
What a 10-inch drawer at chest height is genuinely the best storage in the kitchen for:
- Cutlery and small tools, in a tray, at the height you actually stand — no bending for a teaspoon.
- Coffee: filters, capsules, a scoop, two bags of beans, the thing you reach for before you are properly awake.
- Baking odds: piping tips, cutters, measuring spoons, parchment, the small scale.
- Spice, laid flat and read from above rather than stacked and lost behind.
- Table linen, folded — napkins and runners are exactly a shallow-drawer object.
- Stationery and chargers, if the tower is standing on a desk run rather than a kitchen counter.
Here is the price comparison that frames the decision, and it is almost funny. GN DB18-4, an 18-inch four-drawer base 24 inches deep, is $799.50. GN WD1848 is $796.25. The same money, to within $3.25, buys either a deep drawer bank under the counter or a shallow drawer tower standing on top of it. They do not compete — one holds your pans and one holds everything you reach for standing up — but if the budget only stretches to one and you have not yet solved pan storage, solve pan storage. The four-drawer bases are on their own page.
What it takes off the counter, in square inches
A tower standing on the worktop is occupying worktop. Eighteen inches wide by twelve deep is 216 square inches — a foot and a half of counter, gone for good, and on a standard 25-inch-deep run it takes very nearly half the depth for its whole width. That is fine against a wall you were never going to work on. It is not fine in the middle of the prep stretch, and it is a poor idea in a galley where the facing counter is close enough that a tower narrows the aisle at shoulder height.
The three placements that work are the three where the counter underneath was never really counter:
The coffee station
A machine, a grinder, and a tower of drawers beside it holding everything the machine needs. The counter behind the machine was dead space anyway, and this is the one bay in a kitchen where standing-height drawers earn their money every single morning.
The end of a baking run
Set at the end of the run rather than in it, so the mixer’s working space stays clear. Sheet pans and bowls live below in a base; the small, flat, fiddly half of baking lives in the tower at eye level where you can see it all at once.
A desk or homework counter
At 12 inches deep the tower fits walls that will not take a pantry, and drawers beat shelves for the sort of small flat clutter a desk generates. This is the version we draw most often outside the kitchen proper — see the base cabinet guide for the desk-height parts that go under it.
The end panel tells you what this really is
Look at what it costs to finish the side of one. A wall cabinet end skin is $50.05 in every height. The skin for this box, GN SK WD, is $169.00 — the same figure as GN SK TALL, the skin for a full-height pantry, and more than three times what an upper’s side costs. The catalogue files this under wall cabinets and prices its panel like a tall cabinet, because in every way that matters to a fabricator it is one.
Which means: if either side of the tower is visible, budget the $169.00 and put it on the same order so the paint comes out of one batch. A tower is nearly always visible on at least one side — it is a freestanding-looking object on a counter, and the side is at eye level. Both skins and every other finished part live under decorative accessories.
A column of colour that starts at the counter
Every other upper in the kitchen floats: there is a lit band of backsplash under it, and that band is what keeps a mid-tone run from feeling heavy. This box has no band. It stands on the worktop and runs five feet straight up, which makes it the only place in the room where the grey meets the counter surface directly and reads as a solid object rather than a plane.
That is either the effect you want — a piece of furniture anchoring the end of a run — or it is a block in the wrong place. The test is whether it stands at the end of a stretch or in the middle of one. At the end, against a wall or beside a window, it reads as deliberate. Mid-run, with counter either side of it, it reads as an obstruction. If you are unsure, hold a door sample at $25.00 against the counter you already own and look at the two surfaces touching.
Ordering one
Confirm your finished counter height before you pick a height — the arithmetic above assumes 36 inches, and a thicker slab or a taller base moves every number with it. Confirm the drawer layout. Decide which sides show. Then check the top line against the run beside it on a drawing rather than on the wall.
A free 3D design will do all four of those and come back with the elevation drawn to scale. Boxes ship pre-assembled in 7 days to 3 weeks, drawers already on Tandem plus Blumotion full-extension runners with ⅝″ solid-wood dovetail boxes. The rest of the wall range is on the wall cabinet page and the whole finish on the collection page.
Common questions
- What is a wall cabinet with drawers?
- A narrow upper built as a stack of drawers rather than shelves behind a door. In this finish they come one width only — 18 inches — in four heights from 48 to 60 inches, all 12 inches deep, from $796.25 to $926.25 displayed.
- Why are these cabinets 48 to 60 inches tall?
- Because each height is a standard upper height plus the 18-inch backsplash gap. Standing on a 36-inch counter, the 48 tops out at 84″, the 54 at 90″, the 57 at 93″ and the 60 at 96″ — flush with a 30, 36, 39 or 42-inch upper hung on the usual 54-inch line.
- How deep are the drawers in a wall drawer cabinet?
- The box is 12 inches deep, so the usable drawer depth is closer to ten once the carcass and runners are subtracted. That suits cutlery, coffee, spice, baking small goods and linen. Pots, bowls and anything tall belong in a 24-inch-deep base drawer instead.
- Does a drawer tower take up counter space?
- Yes — 18 by 12 inches of it, about 216 square inches, and roughly half the depth of a standard 25-inch counter for its full width. Put it at the end of a run or over counter you were never going to work on, not in the middle of a prep stretch.
- How many drawers does a WD cabinet have?
- The listing describes a stacked drawer configuration but does not publish the count, and it varies with height. Confirm the interior before you order, because two cabinets at the same price can be split differently.
- Do I need a finished side panel for one?
- Almost certainly. The side of a counter-standing tower is at eye level. GN SK WD is $169.00 — the same as a pantry skin, not the $50.05 an ordinary upper’s side costs — and it should ride on the same order so the finish comes from one batch.
Keep reading
The guides behind the numbers on this page.
- Wall and Tall Kitchen Cabinet Sizes and Buying Guide
The height, width and depth ladder every code on these pages is cut from.
- Dovetail Drawers and Cabinet Quality
What a ⅝″ dovetail box and a Blumotion runner are actually buying you.
- How to Read Cabinet SKU Codes
Which digits are width, which are height and which are depth, before one goes on a quote.
- Cabinet End Panels, Scribe Molding and Fillers Explained
Why the side of this box is priced like a pantry’s.
- Space-Saving Cabinet Solutions
The inserts and narrow units that turn leftover inches into storage.
- Important Kitchen Dimensions Before Buying Cabinets
Counter height, backsplash gap and the 54-inch line the arithmetic above rests on.
- Fabuwood Cabinet Sizes and Specs
Every dimension the line is built to, in one grid.
- Gray Kitchen Cabinets: Finding the Right Shade
The full ladder of greys, and the undertone question answered without hedging.
