Check out my new Postwar Steel forum - dedicated solely to 40s 50s and 60s steel kitchen cabinets
Mid Mod Pam on Dec 15 2007 at 3:02 pm | Filed under: steel kitchen cabinets
I launched a new feature on the blog a couple of days ago. It’s along the top navigation bar — the new Postwar Steel forum.
Take a look, and you will see that it’s entirely focused on vintage steel kitchen cabinets: Buyers, sellers, owners & curious fans alike.
So far, I’ve identified 30+ different brands of steel cabinets from the postwar period.
I am very confident that, over the next several years, the demand for these incredible vintage cabinets will really boom. It’s a pain to find them, haul them, repaint them, reinstall them…yes…but the results are priceless.
I would love it, if readers who already own the cabinets will contribute to the forum. Please feel free to:
- Let me know if you have a brand not listed - I really want to complete this archive listing
- Add photos of your kitchens - photos are super easy to upload
- Add info you have on your cabinets - for example, the cover of a brochure, if you have it
- And, add listings for cabinets you might see in your local craigslist
I am really eager to catalog all the existing brands for all of us to enjoy and share. Thank you!
Hi. We wanted to use metal cabinets in the kitchen of our 1959 ranch in Lexington, Ky. This kitchen originally had maple veneer cabinets, but we ripped them out when we bought the house six months ago. They were disgusting, due to an old plumbing leak and 48 years of grease and grime. We’ve been depending on an old Hoosier cabinet and two small free-standing metal cabinets while we’ve searched for more half-way decent metal cabinets. Most we find are just too rusted out in the bottom for us to cope with.
This past weekend, we found a set of 50s/60s era Haas maple veneer cabinets at our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. We snapped them up — $295 for three base cabinets in different sizes and five wall cabinets. That’s about the cost for just one new in-stock sink base cabinet at the home improvement stores, and they are made of particle board! We hate to give up on the metal cabinet notion, but these Haas cabinets are so similar to what was originally in the house — and they are sturdy, pretty, and clean! I think we will be happy with them.
Hi Sumacsue. Hey, Louisville is one of my home towns! We moved there when I was 12 and I went to jr. high and high school in Hardin and Meade County. All my brothers and sisters still live there. Small world.
I think your maple veneer cabinets sound fabulous. I’ve written before about the use of wood cabinets. Both wood and steel were popular choices as America began constructing its first real wave of “fitted kitchens” after the war. I’d love to see a photo of the cabinets when you get them installed. Meanwhile, I’ll look for some photos of maple cabinets circa 1959 and post them. What kind of hardware do the cabinets have? Is it a colonial, or a modern look?
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Hi. Thanks for the quick replies to my posts. I am not very techno-smart, so, tell me how to get my jpegs into my replies, so that I can post some photos.
The hardware on these “new” cabinets is a modern look, in a copper (soft orangey-pink) color, and is in super shape. The hardware on the original cabinets was black, hammered, and maybe wrought-iron, with a colonial or sort of western look. It was so rusted and dirty it was not salvageable. I am not sure which I like best, the modern or the colonial, but I am just glad the modern is in good shape so we can enjoy it right away and not have to slave over cleaning it up. We are only the second owners of this 48-year-old house, which in some ways is good, but in other ways is not. The previous owner seemed attached to 48 years of grime and passed it on to us.
More small world stuff — you mentioned elsewhere on your site that you have a journalism degree. So do I, and back in the 1980s, I worked at a newspaper in LaRue County, Ky., next door to Hardin County. My son was born at Hardin Memorial Hospital in E-town in 1985. I haven’t done anything journalism-related since 2001, when the internet business here in Lexington, where I worked as an editor, went belly-up.
It’s inspiring to see what you are doing with your web site, combining your journalism skills and your love of your home and 1950s design. It’s getting me in the mood to decorate and write about it! Thanks for this great site where I can communicate with other people who are excited about their homes. Homes are such wonderful places to nestle in and share with others, and these older homes keep us connected to our own and our country’s history.
Thanks, SS. I have to ask my web wizard about putting photos into Comments. Honestly, I am not too techno-smart either, I’m learning a bit at a time. Meanwhile: Send photos to me at: pam@retrorenovation.com. But - keep putting your comments into the blog directly, as this helps the blog on google. I’ll likely do a post on your cabinets, they sound cool! I think I know exactly what you’r talking about re the copper pulls, I’m eager to see them! Take care, Pam
Sumac Sue, I have a 50s ranch in southern Indiana (not too too far from Lexington) and the original pulls and knobs on my wood cabinets are copper. Thay have sort of a widened V-shape with “facets” on the surface.
Deb
Do you think there may be a correlation between writing and renovating 50s houses? I’m an editor (a science editor now for a geological institute, but I’ve done other types of editing, too). This is odd…
Or maybe not so odd, because those of us used to writing feel more comfortable “coming out’ on a blog.
Hi. Maybe there IS a link between 50s houses and writing/editing. I’ve had a writing/editing dry spell for six or seven years, but now that I have this 50s house, I’m doing research on how to fix it up, and that led me to this web site. I guess that’s what a 50s house will do to you, get you moving in many creative directions.
Oh, the copper pulls on these cabinets have a pleasant curvy shape. I will attempt to post a photo as soon as I finish painting my third bedroom a nice, refreshing, pale minty green, a lighter version of one of the previous owner’s many paint choices!
I think that maybe what both things have in common - writing/editing and renovating — is a reporter’s mindset. Also like a scientist. We like to get to the bottom of the situation…the investigation…the quest…and the stories around it all… are all very appealing.