I think this is a great idea! The magnet will keep them from sliding around and they will be right where you want them. The one bit of advice I have about the magnet strip is to get a strong one, although this may matter less when they are stored horizontally. I had left ours installed in our house while living abroad, but on a trip home I actually unscrewed it and brought it over here; the IKEA substitute was not adequate. The one I love is Magnagrip out of Middletown, CT. I just measured it, and with my thickest knife handles, plus the strip, it comes in at around 1 1/4" but YMMV. Mine is only 12" long but you could install two (or hack one down) to get the width you need.

The only thing that might be a bit of a challenge is that the thicknesses of your knife handles may not be the same, so when you lay the blade flat on the magnetic strip, some might "tip" up a bit so that the handle lays down in the drawer. A few of my knives have different thicknesses of the handle, so for me, it wouldn't work...it does work in a hanging position because the knives hang downward and presumably don't touch the back wall - their only contact point is the magnet. In the drawer, you will have the magnet on the blade and then the handle will have to rest on the drawer bottom.

One thing to consider is the practical side of knives and cutting boards under the cooktop. If you're the only person in the kitchen, it may work great. We cook together and I would hate to think about moving the person away from the cooktop every time the other person wanted a knife or cutting board. It would turn into crabbiness every time we cook.

I proudly told DH this idea this morning. He nixed it, feels strongly that the magnet (which I thought would promote safety by holding the knifes in place) would be dangerous because of how the knifes would fly up when you use force to pull them up and out. So the magnet is now out. (I'm not representing his position clearly, but he feels very strongly about this, and is pretty astute with these kind of things, so I'm taking it as a given that we aren't going to use a strong magnet in there.)

Has anyone seen flat knife holders that aren't sized to a specific knife set? Or can you think of a material that we can use to DIY it?

Oh, as to other questions -- the cooktop is gas. And I'm not worried about the location for our particular needs, even though we do cook together.

Thanks everyone!

I have some knives in a drawer and some in a block on the counter. The ones in the drawer are are on a liner. The liner is Easy Liner from BB&B. It's sort of thick and sticky and nothing slides around. I don't mean sticky to the touch, but things tend to sit still on it. Even my dishes in a dish drawer stay put when I open and close it, so I am probably not going to get a dish divider. You could try something like that and it would not be a big investment just to see if it is satisfactory. You could put a few knives on one side, then the cutting board, then more knives on the other side, so that the weight is evenly distributed in the drawer.

I agree with your DH (sorry!) that the knives would fly up when you try to lift them off of the magnet.

In general though I think the drawer seems like a good place for knives and a cutting board. At this moment I can't think of another item to put in there.

I was thinking about how I would DIY this. If the knives are going to sit directly on the wood of the drawer they will slide around. Maybe you could take the drawer out and glue down skinny strips of wood or plastic. Space them out how you need them to be according to your knife collection, and leave an area for the cutting board. I'm envisioning something like a long skinny rectangular piece of wood, not too think so that you are not wasting too much space. They will still slide around if there's no liner, but they would be more contained. You could also cut little pieces of liner to put between the dividers and the knives would stay put even better.

My parents just have all their knives thrown in a drawer. They're fine with that, but I noticed over time with all the shifting that the knives have gouged knicks and holes in the back of the drawer. Not really visible, but still that would bug me.

So maybe place a strip of wood or plastic along that back to keep that from happening.

I have a wooden drawer knife holder. A search will show quite a few options from known and familiar online stores. Bought mine at Ross for half the price, a larger double option. It holds 2 dozen knifes of many different sizes. The only issue I have is not knowing which knife is which, unless the handle is familiar to me or I can see the full length.

Here is a link that might be useful: wooden drawer knife holders

Thanks for the link technicolor. The problem with virtually all of the premade drawer knife holders is that they are too high for our drawer. Our drawer is only about 1.75 inches high, most of the knife blocks are at least 2 inches. I'm trying to find something which will allow us to lay the knives in a horizontal position, and keep them from moving around.