No matter how hard they try to make dish drying racks beautiful, industrial designers will never solve this fundamental problem: When in use, a dish-drying rack looks like a pile of dishes. I wasn’t content with a kitchen design that envisioned this object on my countertop for years to come. I might have let it go if we had had a floor plan of another kind. But our kitchen is center stage in our house, and the cleanup area has no raised countertop to conceal it.

Not finding a simple solution that fit our situation, we set off to design our own under-the-counter drying rack, taking the “custom” in our custom cabinetry to the next level.

Our solution is a stainless-steel-lined drawer. To call it a drawer is a bit of a stretch; it’s got a front and a bottom, but minimal sides and no back. The bottom of the drawer is lined with a stainless-steel tray with a 1-in. lip that extends along the sides and in the front. The tray is installed at a slight angle to direct water toward the back of the cabinet. The bottom of the cabinet is covered with a stainless-steel pan that is pitched to a 1-1⁄2-in. drain line. It leads to a P-trap that ties into our basement plumbing.

I put my favorite dish-drying rack in the drawer and load it up with the hand-washed items that don’t go in the dishwasher. And the counter stays clutter free.

Photo: Charles Miller