[Strawbale] Natural, inexpensive kitchen cabinets

[Chris Green]

Andrew Lund wrote:
> We are in the finishing stages of our very natural home and are looking into our kitchen counter options. We are building on a shoe-string budget, and have steered clear of toxic materials such as chipboard and other off-gasing substances as much as possible up to this point. I'm really struggling to come up with an inexpensive alternative to  conventional cabinets and counters, though... The only green options I have found (such as wheatboard), are certainly not cheap... I've wondered if we could salvage some old cabinets cheaply and reface them, but odds are we'd never be able to piece our whole kitchen together...
>
> So, any ideas? What do poor, natural-mined people do in our situation? :-)
A few years back I helped a neighbour who was renovating a kitchen on a 
shoe string budget. I built a set of cabinets for them from 1" boards 
ripped down to about 2 1/4 to 2 3 5/8". Half the width of a 1x6.

I used these to make six frames to build each cabinet carcase from. I 
half-lapped the wood and glued them up with the help of a carefully made 
jig to keep things square. I backed up the glue with tiny brad nails.  I 
then made 2' x 2' boxes perhaps 29" high from the six glue-ups.
I also made the doors this way, but used strips about 1 5/8", just large 
enough for the hinges and with some room for the plywood infill I 
cleated onto the backside of the doors.

I used infill panels made from recycled wall paneling I happened to have 
around: varnished  'luan mahongany' ply (basically 'doorskin' ply) 
salvaged from a renovation project elsewhere, and somewhere between 
1/8th and 1/4 inch thick. These were attached to the doors with wooden 
cleats. My intent was that all this should get painted by the owners, or 
as an option, the ply could have been covered by clothe. But they never 
got around to doing that before the property was sold.
The cabinet based were mounted onto a platform built from 2x4's and 
plywood. The top was another sheet of 3/4" ply which was then tiled.

Shelves were made up from either edged-joined 1" boards or some thinner 
plywood, and I probably had some means to adjust their height.
 The cost of the cabinet bases was around $45 for wood and maybe $25 for 
inexpensive hinges. That was for about 12' of 2' wide cabinets and a 
special cabinet meant for cookie sheets and such.
And I only used about half the 1x6's I got for the project, so the wood 
cost was maybe $25.

Except for the lack of a final sanding and a finish (paint and or 
clothe) of some kind, the result ended up looking fairly decent. 

I had thought of using something like chicken wire or metal mesh instead 
of the ply infill panels, but decided against it. A month later I 
discovered this was/ is a popular trend in parts of Europe.

Adding the cost of the 3/4" ply to the cost of the bases, this might 
have cost about $230-$250 plus maybe $50- $60 for the tiles (surplus 
stock) and grout, etc.  ( I didn't buy the ply or tiles. )

Unfortunately, I never did get any photos of these, but I did get to use 
the neighbour's pickup for a month or so to attend some summer classes 
at university.

If you're good at scrounging, and have the tools, you could use the 
hardwood you can recover from some shipping pallets. Oak is difficult to 
recover, since the tannin in the oak makes the nails rust and the 
pallets are extremely difficult to take apart. Maple ones are decent, 
though. A friend of mine built his cabs from salvaged maple from pallets.


I also built a smaller set of cabinets for a timber framed cabin out of 
2x2's, laminated shelving stock, and salvaged cut-offs from the building 
site. On the tailgate of a pickup, using only hand tools. These were 
topped with ply and tiles. I was 'paid' a 1988 Dodge Colt with only 
42,000 k on it for this. I still have this car and it turned over 
120,000k yesterday.
I also got to meet the actor Peter Coyote one day, in that town for the 
filming of Deepwater, but that's another story. :-)

Neither of these projects included upper cabinets: some people don't 
like having these, choosing to either have open shelving or to use 
antique armoires as dry storage spaces instead, or Welsh sideboards for 
dishes.
Farm-style kitchens include a movable table as a work space instead of 
counter tops. The tops on these should be the thicker laminated maple 
ones protected by a non-toxic oil finish, but these tops can get 
expensive really quickly.

Cheers,

Chris Green.