Cabinet Doors

O

ver the past week my sweet husband has spent all of his “spare” time installing doors on our kitchen cabinets. It is AMAZING what a difference they make to the appearance of our entire house!

Did you know that kitchen cabinets didn’t exist before 1903? That is the year that “the hoosier” (a unit with a stove, a pull-out counter top, storage area for bread, and drawers for vegetables, cans or other condiments) was introduced. I have seen these in antique shops for years, and always thought of them as quaint – but never realized that this was almost the ONLY storage most people had in their kitchen during that time. Other food was stored in the basement or cold cellar.

There would be separate cupboards in the house for storing dishes and silverware, but these were very different from what we are accostomed to. They were built as separate pieces of furniture (think china cabinet or pie safe) and were often placed in the dining area.

As technology advanced during the 20th century homeowners began to collect “new” things like blenders, mixers, and a large assortment of what my Memere called “kitchen gadgets.” Because of the amount of stuff they had collected, kitchen cabinets became necessary to store all of these new treasures – and were often built by the homeowner or contractor on the spot (This was often not a good thing – there is a big difference between built-to-fit plywood boxes and true custom carpentry). Here is the result as it looked in our house:

Not so pretty right? Well, with a lot of hard work (and living without since last November – yup 11 months) here are our new cabinets!


We still have painting, window trim, and tile work to do, but I am SO in love with these Tiger Maple cabinets that the other details don’t really seem to matter!

Oh, and Nate here is the other photo that you requested for your Dad – Hi Bill!