Cabinetry Basics
If you took everything out of your kitchen and piled it in another room you’d have an interesting mound of storage problems. First it would be a lot of stuff. Much of it would be perishable, delicate or odd shaped. Some would be heavy, some would be very small. There would be sharp, potentially dangerous things and much would be unusual, especially out of its context. The most obvious realization would be what an efficient storage space a kitchen must be to work well.
For many of us the first thing we consider when planning a kitchen is cabinets. Cabinetry is the organizing factor in kitchen design. It provides space for storage and support for work surfaces. It provides places to sit, creates traffic patterns and connects appliances. It houses all kinds of specialized space designed for storing the multitude of unusual tools found in every kitchen. The quality of its construction and materials determines how well it will function and for how long. It is surfaced with interesting materials that should enhance the overall style and atmosphere of the space.
Decisions about cabinetry are complex. There are dozens of sizes, shapes, specialized designs, door styles, drawer and drawer front styles, types of hardware and other choices to make. Materials cover the entire range of natural and man-made from particle board to stainless steel. In this post we’re going to look at cabinetry and how to use it to make your kitchen look good and work well.
Inventory Your Storage Needs
Remember that pile of stuff? While we’re not really suggesting that you pile your kitchen up somewhere and count it, we do recommend careful consideration of how much storage you need, what goes in it and where. An inventory of the items you commonly use and those that are rarely used can serve as a guide to planning your storage needs. Commonly used foods and utensils should be easily accessible while that fondue pot you use once a decade should be banished to a back cupboard or sent to the local garage sale.
The Evolution of the Box
The kitchen cabinets widely available today are basically boxes. They are stacked, screwed to walls and arranged in rows. They are then covered with counters, doors, drawer fronts and decorative panels. Some may contain special inserts for trays, recycling bins, pull-out shelves and everything from ironing boards to cutting boards. These boxes form the core storage and work areas that make your kitchen function well. The key to planning your kitchen’s cabinetry is to focus on these two core functions, storage and work areas.
Fitted Kitchen Cabinetry
The modular nature of cabinets is a fairly recent development. Early kitchen cabinetry was either freestanding furniture (unfitted) or built-in place cabinets similar to those found in pantries (fitted). Kitchens often had few cabinets, based in part on the fact that shopping was done daily. Work surfaces were usually free-standing tables. In the 1930s and 40s, most cabinets were built in place by carpenters who started with raw lumber and built cabinets on site that were an integral part of the building, using the walls themselves as structural elements. Their quality was entirely dependent on the skill level of the carpenter who built them.
Anyone who has tried to remove these cabinets knows that they don’t come off in one piece because they are not boxes, they’re frames nailed to walls and covered with doors. When factory-made cabinets began to appear in the 1940s they were boxes but they still had frames on the front to hang doors on. This style of cabinetry, known as face frame cabinets, was the dominant form of cabinetry, particularly in the US, until the 1980s when European or Euro-Style cabinets began to appear.
