Retro Renovation » kitchens

Where to find kitchen and bathroom cabinets made from laminate

pam kueber — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:00:29 +0000

Several readers have asked where to get cabinets faced with laminate, a style very appropriate for mid-century kitchens and bathrooms. I checked my notes from Cindy — who used laminate cabinets in both her kitchen and her bathroom renovations to very good result. She reports that her cabinets were made by Holiday Kitchens, which turns out to be a relatively large national brand with production in the U.S. Their doorstyle for laminate kitchen and bathroom cabinets is called “Geneva” (you will have to scroll through the door styles to get to it.) I am presuming that you can specify any particular laminate you like. Check out my Fast & Easy Product Guides page for Countertops for my list of laminate manufacturers.

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Steven’s Mondrian kitchen

pam kueber — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:59:40 +0000

Those of you in modern homes, remember to consider a Mondrian-style kitchen if you need to renovate. This one – from Steven’s 1957 Alcoa Aluminum house in Rochester, N.Y. — is original. Well, the part in the foreground is. He needed to replace the cabinets and backsplash along the back wall, and did so in complementary style. The original Mondrians are laminate-over-wood. In the back, Steven combined black-painted wood base cabinets, and blue-painted vintage steel wall cabinets. If you have trouble choosing a color — hey, what a solution. Click on the photo above to see Steven’s entire house, on his flickr photo stream. And click here to see my other posts showing Mondrian kitchens.

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Painted MDF kitchen cabinets: Another great choice for a retro renovation

pam kueber — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:00:12 +0000

Maribeth’s kitchen points to another excellent idea for retro styled kitchen cabinets: Have your kitchen cabinets built out of MDF, then paint them.

I’ve actually mentioned this idea before, and it’s listed as a way to go with bathroom vanities, but I’ve never done a full blown post about it for everyone considering kitchen cabinets.

All about painted MDF kitchen cabinets:

Resists moisture: MDF is the acronym for Medium Density Fiberboard. I think that means wood particles and glue all melded together really solidly. Don’t be put off. The stuff is heavier than wood, and the beauty part in particular, is that it resists moisture. I have MDF cabinets in my bathroom for that reason.
You can paint MDF slab doors: You can paint MDF slab doors — but you cannot paint all-wood slab doors. Real wood, when it is pieced together, expands and contracts when exposed to moisture or humidity. The paint chips/cracks along the joints. MDF, on the other hand, is manufactured in big pieces, 4′x8′ pieces, if I’m not mistaken, so it can be cut to size — even pantry doors — then painted any color. I’m telling you, you will not know it’s not wood.
Versatile: As you can see from Maribeth’s photos, a slab style door is very vintage, yet also very classic — you can dress it up either way.
Specs for an authentic retro door: Vintage steel kitchen cabinets all have slab doors with what is called a “radius” edge, and the doors are installed as “full overlay” — that is, you don’t see any of the cabinetry behind the doors or drawers. This set up – full overlay – also gives you the biggest drawers.
Virgin adhesion: There’s more: You can paint these guys any color, and since you’re going straight onto a virgin MDF surface, you should get great adhesion.
Retro and custom touches: Under the sink cabinet, carve those horizontal ventilation slats… paint your cabinets a glossy color…and install retro or vintage pulls…
A good cabinetmaker can replicate these ventilation slats in MDF

and people won’t know they aren’t metal. Add a cookbook shelf. Build in a desk. If you get the right cabinetmaker, he or she can craft these things. It’s flat wood – you can do anything. Scour all my vintage galleries and posts for ideas.
Affordable: As Maribeth points out, these cabinets can be built very affordably. She had her entire kitchen and laundry room done for $6,000, including painting. And she has A LOT of cabinets. But note, before I found my metal cabinets, I had my kitchen also specked out for MDF cabinets. I bet I had as many cabinets as Maribeth, and the store wanted $14,000, and painting was not included. So, shop around, recognizing of course, that getting a quality, reliable craftsmen is another story altogether…
Be conscious of cabinet construction, too: The construction of the cabinets (what you don’t see) also matters. When we were shopping, I bought an online subscription to Consumer Reports to get their tips. Tips I still remember are: Dovetailed drawers. Slides and glides matter. And so does the thickness of the “box”. Thicker plywood is better. As Maribeth pointed out, she originally was just going to repaint her old cabinets. But when they took off the countertop, the boxes were in such bad shape, they were not worth saving. That was the state of my 70s cabinets, too. The boxes were, like, one step above cardboard…the doors were basically falling off them within 30 years. Even if you don’t think you are going to be in your house 30 years, I think it is wise to save up and pay for better constructed boxes up front. It’s probably better for the environment and for your house karma, too.

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Our 70th brand of vintage steel kitchen cabinets: Anemone Kitchen Furnishings

pam kueber — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:59:06 +0000

Retro-anthropologist Pam here. I spotted my 70th brand of vintage steel kitchen cabinets: Anemone Kitchen Furnishings, a lower price point brand from English Rose. You can read more about it, and see the complete 1955 ad, over on the Forum.

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Tami’s mint-in-box Mercury exhaust fan

pam kueber — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:00:31 +0000

MIB NOS bathroom and kitchen items are still out there, readers. Reader Tami made a big score with this 1980 Mercury exhaust fan, which she found for $27 on craigslist. I asked her if she could tell us the whole story and some more about what’s going on in her kitchen:

Hi Pam,

Background – I’m planning on remodeling and moving my kitchen (just got the plan/engineering estimate today – $5k! Ouch! That doesn’t even include the permits yet, which will run another $2-3k). Since I’m into vintage/retro most everything except toilet paper (for obvious reasons), I will be putting a 1949 Tappan Deluxe in my new kitchen. I was just going to spruce up my current old exhuast fan and hood since it is 48″ wide to put over the Tappan. I routinely search Craigslist for building items, and saw an ad for a brand new in the box Mercury 621 vertical exhaust fan for $27, but didn’t call because I had planned on my old hood and cabinets over my stove.

I saw the ad reposted two more times…and still I didn’t call – can you believe that? What was I thinking? Then one day I was playing around with my house plan software and decided to see how things looked by deleting the cabinets over the stove which would really be no loss to me since I’m only 5′ 2″ and can never reach anything up there unless it is in very front of the cabinet, and I’m on tiptoes. My software has a 3D view so I could see what things looked like – and wow! I loved it without those cabinets…..then I remembered that Mercury fan, which I would just place in the soffit above the stove. Could I be so lucky that it was still available? I searched CL for “mercury fan” and there it was again, posted for the 4th (or maybe 5th or 6th) time! I called the owner, and picked it up the next day leaving $27 poorer, and one brand new clean and shiny Mercury fan richer.

Two pictures attached – grill and directions. Interesting, this was shipped to a hardware store in Oakland CA – I’ll have to look them up to see if they are still in business! Also, the fan direction sheet said at the very bottom, tiny print: Rev. 4/80 – so this fan is no older than April of 1980.

Tami

Thanks, Tami, for sharing. Good luck with the kitchen reno. Buckle your seatbelts, you know it’s always…bumpy.

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Are you looking for vintage metal kitchen cabinets?

pam kueber — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:59:39 +0000

I love this photo posted on our vintage steel kitchen cabinet Forum…and I fussed with it to make it look like an old polaroid. These are 1957 yellow GE cabinets, for sale in St. Louis. How many readers have steel kitchen cabinets — are installing them — or on the hunt?

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What is this 1950s British kitchen gadget?

pam kueber — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:00:34 +0000

Sherri read this Time Warp Wives post from last year and asks, “What is the gizmo above the stove??” Does anyone know? How about some wild and wacky guesses? Meanwhile, remember the vintage “Teasmade” – as in ‘tea is made’ combo alarm clock, radio, and tea maker that I spotted on ebay last year? tea hee, those wacky brits.

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A sneak peek at Karmi’s retro renovation kitchen

pam kueber — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:59:23 +0000

Where has Karmi been all these many months? Well, I know. I hear from her via email now and then…she’s been lurking, she tells me. And — she’s a-workin’ on her kitchen. Then, there’s that thing called “life” and “work” going on, too. She wrote me the other day. Says the kitchen is almost done. The main countertop had to go back for rework (oh, we know these things happen…) but this piece fit. Enjoy this little slice of her aqua and pink kitchen. The whole kit and kaboodle to come soon.

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A 1957 Time Capsule Kitchen

Erica Donnis — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:00:27 +0000

A view of the Koravos family kitchen. Courtesy of Historic New England. Used on this site with permission.

THE 1957 KITCHEN from the Koravos family home in Andover, Massachusetts is the eye candy of the America’s Kitchens exhibition. Imagine original robin’s egg blue metal cabinets, stainless Westinghouse wall oven and cooktop, and canary yellow Formica counters with space-age patterning, all in near pristine condition. Mrs. Koravos preferred to cook in a second full kitchen in her basement, leaving this one on the first floor, which her guests would see, clean and clutter-free. According to curator and co-author Nancy Carlisle, show kitchens were popular in Greek- and Italian-American homes during the twentieth century. And take heart, retro renovators: Historic New England acquired the Koravos gem when a relative of co-author Melinda Nasardinov saw it posted on Craigslist!

Erica Donnis is an independent historian and museum consultant based in Burlington, Vermont. This is her fifth and final vignette reviewing America’s Kitchens — the book and now, a traveling national exhibition. Thank you, Erica!

Readers, click on the image below THREE times and it will get very big so that you can see the detail.

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The White House family kitchen: Jackie Kennedy had Geneva metal cabinets!

pam kueber — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:55:07 +0000

This photo of the White House family kitchen is from 1992…but if you jump onto this White House Museum page, you can see the kitchen when it was first installed in the private family quarters area by and for Jackie Kennedy. And glory be, it sure looks like her cabinets were Geneva’s. I can tell by the cabinet pulls — you can just barely see that they have the white plastic recess piece that gets hard and cracked and discolored and is in great demand by retro renovators today. There’s also a cool photo of Gerald Ford with a harvest gold stove in the background — but by then, the steel cabinets were out, and wood cabinets were in. Hey, where have we heard that story before. Before the Kennedys converted the space to a kitchen, the room had been a guest room and bedroom. The Clintons converted it to a family room. (Photo: Historic American Buildings Survey/HABS.)

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