Unfitted Kitchen, But With Cabinets
Go ahead and laugh, but I tried to channel all the Carl Larsson/Cotswold Cottage/Massachusetts Colonial/DeVol Workshop/Massachusetts Greek Revival (my actual house’s era, 1860)/Unfitted Kitchen inspiration into my kitchen design. (If you want all the visuals, go here to my Pinterest board.)
(A print of this is up in a bathroom upstairs — I think I will bring it down soon!)
I also had to be remembering that I have worked here for 24 years and the layout is ingrained in my muscle memory, as are my preferences for my work order. I have made numberless meals on a regular basis for up to eleven people every day, and I know what I need to have right at hand. I know what frustrated me (not much light! so many paths! small work area! where to put the fridge! bodies in my way!). I know what I loved (the fireplace! my view of my yard! people at the kitchen table! being able to go right out to the deck!).
And also of course, there’s the matter of staying in the budget. And not going crazy!
Obviously a big part of any kitchen design will be the cabinets. As I said, everything had to be ripped out (floor, ceiling, walls, everything), and our old cabinets, while solid in some ways (not in others), were not going to fit the new situation.
For instance, after three (3!) layers of walls were removed, we gained some inches, and the two (2!) layers of ceilings coming down made the end result 6″ higher. If you can keep your cabinet boxes, you should. It’s not hard to change doors or paint, and for about 23 years we were pretty happy with the old cabinets just painted a cheery yellow.
My excellent contractor put me onto a local cabinet maker, Carousel Cabinets, and they worked with my design to produce custom cabinets fitted to the inch. And I’m going to say that having talked to a conventional kitchen cabinet dealer and gotten a quote, what I got was less expensive and far more particular. The dealer can only offer semi-custom (basically in 3″ increments), which means you end up with spacers and upsellings for expensive little fillers that aren’t really useful.
Dave at Carousel Cabinets (and this is not any sort of promo whatsoever) sat with me and sweated out the exact configuration I needed to make my limited space work for me. He also added his expertise in thinking in three dimensions, resulting in some of my more cockamamie ideas actually working (e.g. the corner shelves next to the stove — it was he who expanded them so I could actually access the space — I talk about this problematic area here and there are many befores-and-afters in that post).
Here are my drawings — and if you are going to work directly with the cabinet maker, you need something like these, or a designer to come up with them. He will then make his own schematics.
One of the services the kitchen dealer (you know, the showroom where they have all the displays, and basically salesmen for your project) offers is this interface, between your possibly vague ideas and the cabinet factory’s need for precision, but they are more used, I think, to working with a conventional kitchen rather than an old, funky one like mine. For instance, they all wanted me to have a big island with stools and get rid of my kitchen table…
Finally, I simply took graph paper and drew things to scale myself; but it was a lot of work, though also fun. (I will say, following some blogs of actual designers, in the end a lot comes down to the actual installation, and it’s not uncommon for things to look a bit different from the plan, whether you are an architect or a housewife.)
I wanted the Shaker design for the cabinet fronts, but simple so I could easily wipe them (no beading, which I love but fear, as I’m not that good of a housekeeper).
I wanted the feet on the bottoms of the lowers — this is the element that most gives the “unfitted,” furniture-like look even when you are needing to maximize every inch’s efficiency, meaning it all had to be quite fitted in the end, despite my visions of hutches and so on.
Fortunately, Dave was willing to make that all look the way I wanted, and my contractor, Joe Basile, who is an amazing carpenter, made those feet happen after Dave made them. “I love them so!” I exclaimed. “I hate them!” he responded. Well, they took him a long time to install on my wonky floor! (Some touchups still need to happen here, FYI)
The cabinets are wood (high-quality maple plywood for stability) and the doors and fronts are MDF (“it should be called H[high]DF because it’s an incredibly solid, durable product,” Dave told me). I went with that for a couple of reasons (the wood cabinets, the two uppers, have wood doors though).
One, wood fronts are much more expensive, and for me the budget priority was to have everything fit perfectly and work efficiently. Two, I don’t have AC, and in the summer my kitchen is humid; in winter the wood stove is going all the time and things get very dry.
I know from experience with my old, solid wood cabinets that the face boards move, splitting the paint and so on. I decided to avoid all that (with the need for refinishing down the road) by doing with the MDF.
I love them. They feel and look like wood. I was worried they would feel plasticky, but they don’t — as they are painted, they feel like the other painted surfaces (eg the shelves). They are beautiful.
I love my open shelves so much.
As you will recall, we had taken the doors off of some of our old cabinets and so I was familiar with having things be open. I love my bowls and pretty things. I love seeing them — they make me happy, as well as saving me from rummaging for just the right serving dish by being on view. I am fine with wiping shelves, and the truth is you have to wipe down closed cabinets as well!
I feel like a princess with my soft-close drawers! True royalty!
And I highly, astronomically, stratospherically recommend drawers for your lower cabinets! What a joy — they pull all the way out and are so sturdy — you can load them up.
I have so much to say about how I decided where everything would go, but this will have to do for now. I am also on the lookout for vintage shelves for the spaces below the built-in shelves, so all that will have to be for another post!
Paint colors: Cabinets: Benjamin Moore Governor’s Gold; Walls/trim: BM Calming Cream; Upper cabinets: cherry with walnut stain; Island: pine with chestnut stain.
bits & piecesBetrayed Without a Kiss — an article everyone should read. We need to reject divorce.
For many years, as the LGBT gender ideology got going for real, Christians were inundated and inundated each other with soft and hard rhetoric for accepting it, mostly based on false ideas about charity and niceness. We’ve now come to the (inevitable, forewarned) point of internal approbation, and we need to repent and put a stop to it, however late in the game. I recommend reading Leila Miller’s forthright words on the subject here and here (I mean, really — can we just bring back taboos against being sketchy?). I also recommend reading what Cardinal Müller has to say, here. Common sense, Scripture, and the perennial teaching of the Church, people!
New Hampshire’s oppressive pine tree laws sparked a little-known colonial uprising in 1772 called the Pine Tree Riot. An early test of British royal authority, it may have encouraged the Boston Tea Party a year and a half later.
from the archivesPrudent purchases for the household — I wrote this for an unmarried lady, but it’s never too late.
No matter what people tell you about “today” and how “things are different, you need to tell your kids about things,” remember — parents have to protect their children’s innocence.
liturgical living
Again, remember — Candlemas is coming. Go to this post and scroll to the liturgical living section for candle thoughts!
follow us everywhere! share us with your friends!
Here is my affiliate link to my Amazon page — the only affiliate thing that goes on here on LMLD, which is why the page loads quickly and you don’t have to keep closing pop-ups etc! Thank you for opening it and shopping if you are so minded. If not, don’t worry one bit!
My book, The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life is available from Sophia Press! Also in paperback now! All the thoughts from this blog collected into three volumes, beautifully presented with illustrations from Deirdre, an index in each volume, and ribbons!
My “random thoughts no pictures” blog, Happy Despite Them — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!
My podcast, The Home Truths Society, can be found on the Restoration of Christian Culture website (and you can find it where you listen to such things) — be sure to check out the other offerings there!
Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:
Consider subscribing to this blog by email.
We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram, Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.
Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)
The boards of the others: Rosie’s Pinterest. Sukie’s Pinterest. Deirdre’s Pinterest. Habou’s Pinterest
The post Unfitted Kitchen, But With Cabinets appeared first on Like Mother, Like Daughter.
