Kitchen cabinet


Kitchen cabinets are the built-in furniture installed in many kitchens for storage of food, cooking equipment, and often silverware and dishes for table service. Appliances such as refrigerators, dishwashers, and ovens are often integrated into kitchen cabinetry. There are many options for cabinets available at present.

History

As commonly used today, the term kitchen cabinet denotes a built-in kitchen installation of either a floor or a wall cabinet. Typically, multiple floor cabinets are covered by a single counter, and floors and walls are not accessible behind and under the cabinets. Kitchen cabinets per se were invented in the 20th century. A precursor, not built-in, was the Hoosier cabinet of the 1910s, a single piece of furniture incorporating storage and work surfaces, of which over 2 million were sold by 1920.
  • Pre-WW-I cabinet design. Typical kitchens before World War I used freestanding work tables and a pantry for dry storage. Cupboards were sometimes used in kitchens, though in larger houses dishes were more typically stored in the dining room or butler's pantry. Perishable foods such as milk, meat, and vegetables were purchased daily.
  • Post-WW-I industrial era. Increasing interest in household efficiency led to pioneering motion studies of housework in the 1920s by industrial psychologist Lillian Moller Gilbreth. Subsequent improvements in kitchen design set the stage for the familiar built-in cabinetry of the present day. At the time, work surfaces were typically made of linoleum or stainless steel. Improvements in technology eventually made industrial-scale cabinet production possible.
  • Post-WW-II cabinet design. In the U.S., countertops of high-pressure laminates such as Formica became popular. Laminates led to the adoption of the seamless flush-surface kitchen design that is common today, though laminates themselves began to be supplanted by solid surface materials, such as stone and quartz. In Europe, built-in cabinets had also been pioneered in the 1920s. With improved materials, the frameless cabinet style, notable for its architectural minimalism reminiscent of Bauhaus design, emerged in European kitchen design and was soon adopted worldwide.
  • Post-modern cabinet design trends. Other elements of kitchen design affect the choice of cabinetry. For example, post-modern kitchens tend to be characterized by hardwood floors, earth tones, and bare walls in place of wallpaper which, in turn, affect cabinetry choices. Various trends include the introduction of more expensive options, space-saving measures, a larger number of ovens, thicker countertops , taller base cabinets, honed finishes, taller countertop appliances, undercounter and task lighting, and higher ceilings. While these are general kitchen design trends, they have also influenced cabinetry.
  • Kitchens today. Modern kitchen design has improved partly as a result of ergonomic research. Functionality is important; one research study had "anthropological scientists" observing homeowners "interact" with their kitchen cabinets. Kitchens are larger and have more cabinets; some kitchens may have as many as fifty drawers and cabinet doors. New features today include deep drawers for cookware, pull-out shelves to avoid excess bending, sponge trays on the front of sink cabinets, pullout hideaway garbage/recycling containers, pull-out spice cabinets, lazy susans in corner cabinets, vertical storage for cookie sheets, full-extension drawer slides, and drawers and doors with so-called soft-close/positive-close mechanisms enabling drawers to shut quietly, or which shut fully after being pushed only partially. As housing stocks get older, many homeowners face problems with visually unappealing older kitchen cabinets; in such situations, there is a choice to buy new, reface existing, or to strip and refinish existing cabinets. By 2009, there was more emphasis on cabinets designed with environmental factors in mind. So-called "green cabinets" were becoming more popular. As homes in Western countries became more airtight to save on heating and cooling costs, air quality has sometimes suffered as gases which are released from resins as they cure. Resins, organic materials which convert from liquid to solid form, are used to manufacture engineered wood frequently used to build kitchen cabinet carcases can be a factor. According to a recent report:

Considering that North Americans spend a large proportion of their lives indoors, it’s clear why this is a key issue in designing healthy spaces. Additionally, air quality is not a stand-alone problem; rather, every other component of the home can affect air quality. Air quality can be compromised by off-gassing from cabinetry, countertops, flooring, wall coverings or fabrics; by cooking by-products released into the air, and by mold caused by excess moisture or poor ventilation.

Cabinets consist of six-sided wooden boxes or "carcass" closed on five sides with a door or drawers on the sixth.
  • Cabinet faces. Solid wood remains a popular choice for many cabinet parts, including bases, frames and doors. However, most commercial cabinets have sides, backs and bottoms made of plywood or particle board. Traditional-style solid-wood cabinetry is more expensive and many consumers opt for cabinets that incorporate many particle board or plywood components to reduce costs. Pricing for solid wood cabinet doors depends on the wood species used. For example, teak is more expensive than cherry, which is more expensive than maple, which is more expensive than oak. Similarly, solid wood is more expensive than plywood which, in turn, is more expensive than particle board or similar sheet goods.
  • Cabinet body. The cabinet carcase is usually made from plywood or high-quality particle board, particularly for flat sections that do not need to be shaped, such as shelves, cabinet sides, or drawer bottoms. Typical plywood thickness in these applications varies from to . Stiffness and strength are important factors since cabinets are expected to retain their shape over time and avoid bend or sag while continuing to support a heavy load. The best choices for strength are plywood and higher-quality particle board; they also have the benefit of being less susceptible to warping from moisture. Stiffness increases rapidly with shelf thickness; regardless of material choice, a shelf is 73% stiffer than a shelf, even though it is only 20% thicker. Shelves made of some particle board formulations, especially where not reinforced, may sag or deform. Particle board strength and rigidity varies by formulation and is determined by the resin used. Plywood carcases are usually assembled with screws and nails, while particle board carcases do not hold screws or nails as well and therefore are typically joined with glue, groove joints, or mechanical fasteners such as confirmat-cam assemblies. Generally, plywood-carcase cabinets are more expensive than particle-board-carcase cabinets.
  • Cabinet frames and doors may be fashioned from solid wood, medium density fiberboard, particle board, plywood, or a combination, and may include lamination or a surface coating over these core materials. A floating panel in a door can be hardwood-veneer plywood captured within a solid wood or MDF frame. Solid wood and MDF can be edge-shaped, e.g., to round or pattern the edges of doors, drawer fronts, or face frames. Particle board, once manufactured, cannot be edge-shaped suitably. Plywood cannot be shaped without revealing its veneer core, often considered unsightly, though edge-shaped furniture-grade plywood with thin plies is considered attractive for limited uses. MDF, once shaped, can be coated conformally with flexible veneers such as thermofoil or can be painted. It can also be covered with wood veneer or high-pressure laminate but only if the edge profile is square or approximately so. Today many cabinet doors and drawer fronts utilize an MDF core. Doors and drawer fronts may also be fashioned of particle board surfaced with high-pressure laminate. Natural wood offers its subtle combination of color, grain, pore pattern, variable absorption and smoothness of finish, and variation with viewing angle and lighting condition. The appearance of natural wood can only be achieved with solid wood components or possibly veneer ; as already pointed out, the two approaches can be combined in a single cabinet. Various transparent grain-revealing finishes including shellac, lacquer, varnish, or polyurethane have been devised. A built-up finish may optionally utilize diverse pigments, dyes, bleaches, glazes, or wood fillers that may highlight contrasting colorants. Finishes can be applied by brush or spray and may comprise many separately applied layers. Accordingly, finishes formulated by differing manufacturers do not, in general, exactly match. Distressing the wood cabinets is another finish application and is often done in conjunction with glazes, stains, paints or dyes. This process consists of adding manufactured imperfections to cabinet doors to give the wood cabinets an aged, distressed, old-world rustic appearance. Common techniques include creating wormholes, rasping, dings and dents and sanding through the wood and layers of finish unevenly.
  • Trade-off: solid wood versus particle board. Solid wood and plywood are durable and strong, but are more costly and offer less dimensional stability at manufacture than particle board. For cabinets and surface finishes that may sustain damage during long use, serviceability is a consideration. In case of damage, solid wood can be repaired by a qualified furniture refinisher, other than the manufacturer, to achieve a perfect match to the surrounding finish. Veneered MDF and particle board components, if damaged, must be replaced by the manufacturer. If water reaches the core, particleboard especially will swell irreversibly. Tolerances for the use of screw fasteners in particleboard are tighter than for solid wood or plywood, and screws often loosen over time if over-torqued. However, MDF and particle board are good choices where cabinets are well-constructed, will be cared-for, where service life is projected as intermediate, e.g., where the kitchen will be remodeled approximately every 15 years, or where the manufacturer can be relied upon to supply replacement components if needed.