WOW. Now this is something I’ve never seen. Thanks to 52PostnBeam for spotting this steel bedroom set on craiglist and posting it on the Forum. So deco. All metal. $175 in Arizona – great deal. As 53pnb says:

Take your love of metal cabinets to the next level…or at least to the next room.

Reminds me, many readers have send me notes over the past two years asking me to do stories on Lustron homes…I actually know about these, have been in a few…I’ll get around to the topic some day! Meanwhile: A metal bedroom set — so cool.

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I live in a dinky New England village, so we often go over to Northhampton, a fun college town, to shop for the day. My super favorite store there is Retro Genie. Jean’s focus is vintage clothes, but she also has bits of furniture and kitchen stuff, too. I loved this vintage metal patio set, with the mill finish (like a 50s screen door) and original umbrella. I’ve never seen one like it. Jean says it all folds up, the table, too, and that’s certainly a plus when you have to find a place for everything in the garage for the winter. P.S. See those three pairs of vintage canvas shoes – black, red, navy? I now proudly own them. I am such a sucker for MIB. Do not ever believe a single word that I write about “restraint.” Except, I guess I didn’t buy the patio set. I am so proud of myself.

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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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Reader Jeff spotted these St. Charles cabinets just like Erika’s for sale at Construction Junction in Pittsburgh. They are spectacular. And a terrific price: $600 for this set, and a second set available for $500. That is A LOT of cabinets to work with, with makes it easier to fit into your kitchen — a rare find. Woah, I love these. Love love love love love. Thanks, Jeff!!! You get exclamation points for this one.

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Vintage steel cabinets that have wood doors are starting to surface quite a bit lately. Erika recently purchased these vintage St. Charles’. Yowza, look at the brushed door steel trim and integrated cabinet pulls, these are absolutely gorgeous. Erika is in the midst of her kitchen renovation, but she pulled some cabinets out of the garage and into the house to take some photos to tantalize us.

Erika writes:

Hi Pam,

I recently purchased St Charles 1950s era cabinets to use in my kitchen. I have found the most information regarding this era via your website/blog which by the way is FABULOUS ! …

They are aquamarine all over (interior, exteriors, etc) except for the faces of the upper cabinets. The upper cabinets faces are a dark reddish brown wood with a metal rectangular detail that ties into the knob.

Only the top cabs and the tall broom cabinet have the wooden faces like shown.  I was inspired by you aqua kitchen ! Before I saw yours I was considering having them painted !!

Thoughts ??… We hope to have them installed by Mid September so I will keep you updated. I would love to share more pics once they are in b/c the one cabinet has glass doors and shelves with lighting and another has a cute stainless bread drawer built in , etc.

- erika

My thoughts: As I’ve discussed before on the blog, throughout the 50s the steel kitchen cabinets manufacturers were duking it out with the wood cabinet manufacturers for primacy. There’s also a larger design story going on — as the wall between the kitchen and family living areas began to come down, literally, there was a drive to make kitchen cabinets more “furniture like” so that the kitchen meshed with the adjacent living areas. So one of the things you saw happening was that steel cabinet makers started adding wood doors.  Kind of the “best of both worlds” – durable steel box, warm and cozy wood doors.  See this St. Charles photo at the left – you can see what I mean.  This harvest gold kitchen is from ‘66. I tend to think your cabinets are from around the same time. Why – I am skeptical that aquamarine really lasted through the 70s; at the same time, your red wood doors look a lot like those at the left. Finally, I will say, I am not academically equipped to date the St. Charles — I make these guesses based on triangulation from all the stuff I’ve stared at for the past 7 years or so. I don’t have comprehensive catalogs or anything close. St. Charles, by the way, was the longest lasting steel kitchen cabinet company, surviving through the early 2000’s. It also seems to have been considered the highest quality. Although I’ll tell you – my Geneva’s are fantastic. The brand name is now owned by the Viking Range company. They launched all-steel cabinets last year. They cost a bloody fortune. Our cabinets are worth a lot of dough re mi, and I predict prices for vintage metal cabinets will continue to go up up up as the retro renovation movement continues to strengthen.

Many thanks, Erika. We can’t wait to see the finished product. And to all the other readers who have sent me photos: Hang in there, it takes me a while to get to them as my fulltime job also calls for attention!

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INCREDIBLE FINDS — Two American Kitchens sink bases and porcelain drainboard sinks, one with original faucet, available Mint In Box in Boise, Idaho. $500 for the unit with the base/drainboard sink/faucet, $400 for the unit sans faucet, different pulls, later perhaps? Know that you can still get these replacement faucets here - it is absolutely amazing that they are still available.

Mega snaps for spotting this to Allen, who has a great flickr photoset under the name Roadside Pictures – be sure to check that out, too!

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READERS GARTH AND MARTHA from Dallas recently went through the process of having their vintage Crosley metal kitchen cabinets repainted. In this post, Garth recounts the saga. And like most major retro renovation projects – it is indeed a saga…. It includes a drive from Dallas to Ohio and back to get the cabinets…schlepping to nearly half a dozen places to understand the best approach…and doing a lot of the moving and prep work. One thing that’s immediately clear about this kitchen, is that it’s not an exacting “period” re-creation. Garth and Martha have taken very vintage style cabinets and reworked them into a contemporary design — note the stainless steel counters, backsplash and appliances — and yowza, I want an orange Marmoleum floor! Not to mention is that a huge chocolate mousse cake in the corner? A wonderful kitchen, a beautiful job — that really suits the house. Garth and Martha, thanks so much for sharing your experience!

Garth writes:

Metal Cabinet Refinishing

My wife and I bought a house with a kitchen that was partially furnished with Crosley metal cabinets.  I found someone thru the RetroRenovation forum that had some additional Crosley cabinets of the same style that he had removed from his kitchen in Ohio and we drove up from Dallas to buy them.  We brought them back down to Dallas and figured a layout to the kitchen that would use most of the cabinets.  Both the Ohio cabinets and the ones originally in the house had a number of layers of paint on them and needed to be stripped and re-painted.

After reading posts on the RetroRenovation website, I began by taking a test cabinet to a powder coater in the area.  He took it to his sand blaster to have it taken down to bare metal.  Unfortunately, his sand blaster thought that the metal on the cabinet was too thin, and that it was likely the cabinet would get many small dents from the sand blasting process.  The powder coater recommended that I try and find someone who might be able to chemically strip the cabinets and then bring them back.  He also warned me that some of the doors might warp when the cabinets were in the kiln as part of his process.

I took the cabinets to a local chemical stripping business, and he test stripped one of them and found that they were not going to be a good candidate for chemical stripping because the base coat of paint was too tough for his stripper.  He took a cabinet by a sand blaster that he worked with frequently, and this sand blaster had the same opinion as the first about likely denting during his blasting.

I then took the cabinets out to a soda blaster in Justin, Texas.  Soda blasting is like sand blasting, but the blast media is soda instead of sand.  It is a much softer media and can be used on more delicate materials.  This blaster also had a couple of other blasting media that he could use, such as nut shells and corn which were also able to be used with a more delicate materials.  In talking with powder coaters prior to having the cabinets soda blasted, they had shared their concern that the soda would affect the metal of the cabinets in such a way that their powder coat would not adhere properly and would eventually flake off.  Some thought that it had to do with the alkaline properties of the soda and some seemed to think that it had to do with the smoother surface that the soda left the material with.  I found a couple of places online that recommend that after the metal is soda blasted, you clean it with power washer and a product called Hold Tight.  My soda blaster didn’t think that the Hold Tight was necessary, but that thoroughly washing them down with water through either a power washer or a garden hose with a spray nozzle was necessary.  He said they should have a light sanding prior to being finished.  I decided that the Hold Tight was fairly cheap insurance so sprayed them thoroughly with a nozzle on the garden hose, and wiped them down with a diluted (1:50) bucket of Hold Tight.  At the very least, I thought that the Hold Tight would keep them from flash rusting prior to finishing.  It took him about 12 hours to blast them all (roughly about an hour each cabinet).  He charged by the hour for his work so it cost around $1,400 to have them soda blasted.  I took the cabinets to him so it would have cost a bit more if he either had to come and get the cabinets or do them on my property.  It took me most of a day to wash all 13 of the cabinets down.

Since I was concerned about the doors warping, and the powder coaters were generally not excited about the soda blasting process, I decided that I would look into having them painted instead of having them powder coated.  I spoke with a local auto body shop about painting them and they seemed interested, but said all of the paints that they used had lead* in them.  They felt that the clear coat on the cabinets would protect the lead in the paint from the kitchen utensils, but that it could be a concern.  I wasn’t that bothered by the lead, since there was the clear coat, and my wife and I don’t have any children, but the body shop was a little slow in getting a rough estimate of the cost to paint the cabinets, so in the meantime I found a local business that does electro-static painting.  This is a process where they give the metal a charge and then spray it with a paint that has the opposite charge, which makes most of the paint go to the cabinet instead of elsewhere in the room.  It is used mostly in situations where the cabinets are not going to be removed from the house or business and you don’t want overspray on the floor or wall around where they are painted in place.  I took the cabinets to the painter’s warehouse, hoping that it would save me a little money.  He painted them with a urethane based paint, since he thought it was a tougher finish than his epoxy based paint.  I chose a basic white color (he called it GE White, I think), but I believe that I could have had him match any color that I wanted.  It took about 2 weeks to get the cabinets painted and back at the house, but that was because of his schedule.  I think that once he was able to get to my job, it only took 3 or 4 days to prep them and paint them.  It cost a little over $2,000 for him to paint the 13 cabinets.  I was very happy with how they came out.

If I were to do this again I might change a couple of things.  First of all, I was really pleased with the soda blasting.  If I had thought of it prior to arranging to have the cabinets electro-static painted, I would have asked the soda blaster about powder coaters that he regularly works with.  They presumably, are aware of how to prep the cabinets for powder coating when they have been soda blasted.  While I am happy with the electro-static painting, I think that the powder coating might hold up a little bit better over time, and I don’t think that it would be any more expensive than the painting would be.  Additionally, since the soda blaster and the powder coater have a relationship, they would probably transfer the cabinets between their shops and do all of the cabinet prep, saving me both of those duties.  There were not many dents in the cabinets, but there were a few small ones.  I decided to just ignore them, but after the painter finished, he told me that he could have filled in the small dents during his prep work had I requested it of him, and I probably would have done that, although it might be an option if the cabinets were powder coated instead of painted.  Overall, though, we think that there isn’t anything better than these 60 year old cabinets!

Wow, thanks, Garth! And didn’t I tell you this was a saga, readers?

*I also want to note that in his saga, Garth mentions that one painting crew said their paint would have lead in it. Note that the paint in original vintage steel cabinets also may contain lead, like other original painted surfaces in your vintage home. Know what you are working with and take precautions accordingly.

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VINTAGE EYE CANDY today — a complete catalog of steel kitchen cabinets from Montgomery Ward, circa 1941. You can see from this brochure, how much simpler kitchens were in the pre-war era. Of course, we were still in recovery from the Great Depression. Even a kitchen like this — which would seem so basic today — would have been immensely luxurious in 1941.

Here we see again, how an average housewife of the era may only have been able to afford and purchase the  sink cabinet alone, with its porcelain-enamel-on-cast-iron drainboard sink-top… While the catalog is presumably about the full range of cabinets, it is principally marketing the “Modern Cabinet Sink.”  This would be the first piece a homemaker would buy — she would then integrate this into her farmhouse kitchen – which may have had homemade wood cabinets or not, or into her apartment kitchen to replace the old wall-hung kitchen sink. She could buy the rest of the pieces later. What a move forward: Built-ins, made in a material, steel, that was “vermin-free.”  Oh, also notice the stainless steel drainboard sink on p. 4 – a look you can replicate with Elkay aluminum drainboard sinks today.

 

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When I went to order window treatments for my kitchen, Colleen from my local hardware store took one look and recommended 2″ aluminum blinds. “It’s what we rip out of every other 50s home,” she reassured.

We chose from the Hunter Douglas “Macro” line. These horizontal blinds are PERFECT, and from my reading of scores of midcentury magazines, I know that “venetians,” as they called these then, are totally authentic. About two years ago – when I originally ran this post — I even saw that Hunter Douglas has come out with a new color palette with circa 50s colors. I chose a soft neutral metallic, as my window is quite large and I didn’t want the shade to overpower the room.

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WHERE IS THE BEST PLACE to sell your vintage steel kitchen cabinets? As a follow up to my post on how much your metal cabinets may be worth, here is an outline of where and how you can sell them.

The market for these cabinets is very local. People will want to come look at them before they buy and to be sure, it will be a lot cheaper if they can pick them up rather than having to arrange for a moving company. But, “local” actually means “within driving distance” for someone who wants to buy a set of steel kitchen cabinets. So your marketing and outreach should really extend…3 or 4 hours in a circle around where you live. Here are the sources:

1. Craigslist is probably the most common source for cabinet listings when you take into account the entire U.S.  I think they will only let you list in one city, and if that is their rule, you should abide by it. What a great service they are providing for free, after all! But, it’s my experience that avid craigslist users really on the hunt for a specific item also set up google alerts so that they will see what comes up around the country. So, make sure that you use good keywords in your listing.

2. My Postwar Steel forum — http://retrorenovation.com/forum — was created in December 2007 to connect buyers and sellers of vintage steel cabinets. It’s also free. I do insist, though, that you include your LOCATION and PHOTOS as these are always requested. And if you are wise, you will also include your EMAIL. Note, after you have sold your cabinets you may come back and delete your listing and email. (And I am beginning to delete all posts after 6 months unless they include groovy photos which we like to ogle forever.) The forum requires registration. Remember your password!

3. eBay — I see lots of listing come up, and only 1 in 10 seems to sell. However, there may be after-market bidding going on (at a lower price). eBay may work for you if you are in a larger market where there are more potential buyers.

If you cannot sell your cabinets, they don’t have to go to the dump! You can take them to Habitat for Humanity / Re-Store, where they can be stored until their next owner finds them. And what a great cause. Remember, though: Condition matters.

Finally, if your cabinets are in really bad shape — with tons of rust, for example — take a look at the hardware. There is a market for vintage cabinet pulls — in particular old Youngstown handles. And, people with the old Geneva’s are always eager to connect with the white plastic concave piece behind the chrome pull. And, folks want the knife hinges that connect the doors to the base and wall cabinets. If you have parts, I’d recommend eBay — as they are not expensive to ship.

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