Here’s another company using its mid-century roots to underscore its brand longevity: At this year’s big Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS), Merillat assembled a (company)-historic 1946 Merillat kitchen on site. Seems like it was a big hit — I heard about it from several readers and friends. So I chased down the photos, and here they are — a happy sunny vintage Merillat kitchen, classic Americana complete with original counter top and dinette and period-correct flooring and appliances.
1940s birch kitchen made for the parents of one of Merillat’s first employees
The kitchen has a nice story: The company says that this was one of the first kitchens that founder Orville Merillat built — by hand, no factory yet! — when he launched Merillat in 1946. His wife Ruth Merillat stained and finished the kitchen. (I tend to believe the original finish was all wood — that is, the cabinet boxes were stained, not painted. The company is trying to confirm this for me.)
Orville and Ruth built the kitchen, made from birch, for the parents of the company’s first employee. It remained in its original home — located in Adrian, Mich., where Merillat was founded — for decades. In 1996, as the company was approaching its 50th anniversary, Merillat employees located the kitchen, purchased it from the homeowners, removed it, and gave the homeowners new Merillat cabinets. They then reassembled the 1946 kitchen and presented it to Orville and Ruth as an anniversary gift.
The company says the appliances are all from the same time period, but that they can’t confirm whether they are from the original kitchen. The counter tops are original, but are missing the original metal edging.
It seems like the kitchen was a big success at KBIS — lots of happy picture-taking going on, in this cheery sunshine-y kitchen. Seriously — you can keep your breakfast-bar-style seating — I will choose a kitchen with a dinette plopped in the middle over the island any day.
A peek at Merillat history:
- 1940s — During World War II, Orville Merillat enlists in the Coast Guard as a carpenter. He sends $150 from each paycheck to his wife Ruth and keeps $1. This money, along with the sale of Ruth’s 1938 Chevrolet, was used to start Merillat Woodworking.
original Merillat logo, circa 1946 - 1946 — Orville and Ruth Merillat start the Merillat Woodworking Company in a 2,400 square foot workshop in Adrian, Michigan. Fueled by an incredible work ethic and a post-war building boom, the business grows steadily.
- 1950s — Drawing from manufacturing practices popularized in automotive plants, Merillat standardizes its cabinets to facilitate assembly line production. It becomes the first company to use exclusive Formica laminates on cabinetry. Sales break the $1,000,000 mark.
- 1960s — The Adrian plant expands to over 290,000 sq. ft. with a manufacturing capacity of 270 kitchens per day. By the end of the 1960s, Merillat was manufacturing 1,500 kitchens a day, the company says. In 1962, Merillat says, it introduced a patented hinge that allowed cabinet doors to be easily opened and closed quietly with a gentle push, replacing the standard magnetic latch of the time. The company also received a U.S. patent for its injection molding Romance cabinetry line.
The company was first to put Formica-brand laminate directly on to kitchen cabinet doors, it says. - 1970s — Merillat grows to eight strategically located manufacturing/assembly plants. The ability to control materials and manufacturing processes gives Merillat a competitive edge in production and delivery. Merillat becomes the nation’s largest cabinet manufacturer (although on Facebook, the company says it hit this #1 milestone in 1985.)
- 1980s — The successful cabinet business joins Masco Corporation, an industry leader in home improvement and building products. Orville and Ruth Merillat retire.
- 1990s — Merillat pioneers the development of new door styles, including raised panel vinyl clad doors, and the use of premium woods. The company also begins assembling cabinets a kitchen-at-a-time, a manufacturing model which remains in practice today.
- 2010 — The company became part of Masco Cabinetry, which also includes the KraftMaid, QualityCabinets and DeNova brands. The group is based in Ann Arbor, Mich. Today, Merillat remains the #1 selling kitchen cabinet brand in the U.S., the company told me.
Many thanks to Merillat for the photos and for rockin’ the retro at KBIS 2014! And thanks, too, to our reader-tipsters!
Amy Weinholtz says
My husband was so taken with this yellow & white Merillat kitchen that he did ours as a close match. We love it! We have a 1969 house with cherry flat-front cabinets. We stripped, sanded & painted the cabinet boxes white (smooth finish w/oil base), he stripped and refinished the wood tone flat-front doors, put silver/nickel handles & retro hinges. The walls are butternut yellow, we still have our retro white Formica countertop w/gold flecks, and he’s now putting in our Armstrong yellow VCT tile floor. We even bought a floor polishing/buffer! Please tell me where I should send pix of the finished kitchen – thanks for the inspiration!
Brooke says
That’s my kitchen dining set! I inherited it from my grandmother.
Sheryl Evans says
I live in SW Michigan, just under 2 hours from Adrian and I have the 1946 kitchen shown in the photos! Almost looks identical, although mine certainly don’t look as nice anymore. In my house, the cabinet wall is longer and there are more drawers and mine have decades of paint layers. I don’t know where to look to find any kind of proof. My house was built 1940-1950, can’t seem to find a consistent date on it. I came across this by accident and it was a wonderful surprise!
Kristin says
Just wanted to let you know that this article is on Yahoo Homes today– with your blog linked. Pretty cool! Happy to see this for you!
pam kueber says
Cool! I’ll go take a look! Cool!
Joe Felice says
I have Merillat cabinets! Who knew they are of such noble heritage? When I saw this kitchen, I decided to have my cabinet boxes painted canary yellow, which is the accent color of my kitchen.
pam kueber says
Cool!
Mary Elizabeth says
Yes, let’s see them when done.!
AH says
Are those three parallel lines under the sink a signature of this company?
Mary Elizabeth says
No, it was a standard style to have this type of vents cut out of the wood or metal in the cabinet under the sink. My theory is that It allowed for some ventilation of the moisture coming off the pipes and in the winter it allowed heated air from the house to reach the pipes to keep them from freezing.
jeanne says
Those cabinets look identical to the 1952 Dearborn, Michigan home I grew up in. We had white painted boxes, with the wood stained/varnished doors and identical hardware. I always assumed they were built into the kitchen. I didn’t know Merillat made something similar. We had brown tile counters, though. I think they were octagon shaped tiles, if I remember correctly. Our kitchen was yellow (with one wall wallpapered), too…with a Colonial style table/chairs in the middle of the kitchen and a Colonial maple hutch in the corner. We hardly had any cupboards!
My sister and I were reminiscing a few weeks ago and she said she remembers our dad keeping his hat in the cupboard above the stove! Everyday he would put it in the cupboard when he came home from work. LOL! I didn’t remember that. She’s 8 years older than me, so she remembers more than I do.
Mary Elizabeth says
Probably your mom couldn’t reach that cupboard, so it was up for grabs. I wonder if his hat smelled of last night’s dinner. 🙂
Josie says
I love this! I have promised myself since I was a child (really… I was a weird kid… and obsessed with dollhouses and having my own house…) that my own kitchen someday would have a checkerboard floor, and I’ve stayed with that… the only thing changing with my moods and years being the size of the tiles and the colours involved.
I still don’t have it in real life yet… but I will…
I really like this one right now.
And I love the simple cheery yellow-and-white palette. Right now I have yellow walls and white appliances and cabinets and I love the home I’m in! (But not the floors so much)
Personally, I’m uncomfortable on bar-stools and I prefer dinettes to a lot of the higher seating I see at islands – I’m only 5’0″ and I hate feeling like I need to pole vault into position and can’t get down gracefully, especially in a skirt.
Anyway, what a long way to say I love this kitchen. I find the yellow-and-white such a nice way to get some colour in without it being super loud or super “diner themed” iykwim.
Mary Elizabeth says
Josie, you are not the only former weird kid with the dollhouses and decorating mania. I designed my own dollhouse when I was a kid, and my grandfather and I built it in his cabinetmaking shop. I made stoves and refrigerators out of painted metal tins and furniture out of scrounged materials. I made a chest of drawers out of three empty small match boxes (not the big kitchen matches, but the small ones for cigarettes, etc.) and my mother found a pile of loose matches in a drawer. I sewed little curtains from quilting scraps my aunt gave me.
Then in Girl Scouts I earned a home decorator badge by making mockups of rooms out of cardboard and a huge scrap book of ads cut out of magazines. (Again, picture Mom opening Ladies’ Home Journal and finding half a page missing. Wha???) If I had understood myself better, I would have gone to design school and become an interior decorator.
So Josie, did you notice that the wallpaper and the curtains MATCHED in that late ’40s or early ’50s ad? When I saw stuff like that as a kid, I would just about swoon.
Josie says
Matching and especially “matchy-matchy” is like a dirty word in decorating nowadays, but I kind of still love it.
I hoarded paint chips and Formica chips. My poor mom. But at least I behaved in the hardware store! Anything to get my chips!
I collected wallpaper books, too. lol.
dkzody says
I love the ad photo as that kitchen, albeit in black and white, reminds me of my current 70s kitchen layout. I’m sure the cabinets in the kitchen, as well as the bathrooms, were all made by the builder as these are tract homes. Many people haven’t cared for the cabinets and have had them torn out when remodeling. I love the flat surfaces as they are easy to clean.
Michael says
OMG!!! The dinette set looks EXACTLY like the set my grandparents had–except theirs was in red. WOW, do I wish I had that set! They had it goin’ on in the ’40s, didn’t they?