The sideboard, if that is what it is called is what I think of as authentic to the era and if yoiu really wanted craftsman style I'd strive for that sort of panel construction. I think it is from near the 20's and I have the table that matches it.
my cabinets are a bit of a mixture of old and new methods, dovetail drawers and old style drawer slides. I did use the self closing euro hinges. I probably could have tinted the panels a bit deeper. the grain on the thin ply I used for the panels isnt' as exciting as the wood I used for the panels and frames.
You can see how I tucked the hood fan and blower out of sight and extended the uppers and the lowers. My plan is to continue around to the right with a narrow depth cabinet and that will also face off that wall and allow access to the deep cubby holes ( not really shown)
my kitchen is big but I prefer not to fill the space with cabinetry although I could use a it more counter space, I figured at least its cleaned up for now and usable and I can progress as time allows. I have some of the parts like drawers made up.
the ceiling above my run of cabinets is lower than the rest of the kitchen because at ne time they lifted the roof and pushed the wall out about 4 feet.
to the right near the sink is the fridge ( nice and close is handy) the wall to the left has a window and door and I left it unencumbered by the cabinetry. If I wanted to blow the wall out I could extend the eating area, but an addition is not planned. Its really pretty functional for the two of us.
I put a food waste disposal in the sink and not much extra bling. I made a vent below the sink for the heat to exit and that's a great location as it warms your feet at the sink. I put three pot lights above. and above the table I have some big lamps from the 70's that are bright and Ill find something more antique eventually.
you can see with these cabinets, they are face frame. the cupboard doors and the drawers close so everything is pretty much even. I went pretty tight with all the gaps. the drawers have to fit pretty close so that they dont interfere with each other if you pull more than one out. If I did it again I'd add a breadboard , maybe even two.
my dad hand cut the dovetails and got me going on building the drawers, he did the ones on the right. I did the ones on the left using a dovetail jig.
I can go into he details of the drawer slides etc if you are building something similar you can take comparisons. I wished the lighting was better for the pics to show how brilliant the grain is on the edging, some of it had really exciting grain and the finish really made it pop. although there is tonal variation i kind of like it not being all monotone.
you might note that the panel on the right side of the uppers is made as a panel not a hunk of plywood. the parts either side of the stove are plywood as they are hardly seen. You cna't see the cabinet ends because they go up to the walls. It consists of three boxes. If you used out of the box cabinetry it would have more plywood separating the boxes than necessary for it's structure, that's the way they do them now.
I originaly configured the cabinet to be an island.. I really didnt want o use up all the center of the room with a cabinet so after my separation I cut the thing down to fit as it is now. If I made an island Id make it moveable which means no sink in the island. It is a trend do that now and thats what you want if you do cooking shows for your guests. I also hate stools. I find them a temporary seating arrangement that is never really comfortable but they are used often to sit people at the back of islands to maintain the counter height sort of eating area. you will see they in a lot of modern kitchens. I find it looks nice visually but I hate sitting adults on high chairs Its a space saving workaround so people can sit at their islands. great for the real estate photos, not so good in reality in my opinion.
I left space thinking I could build a nook sort of like a bench seat in a diner along in front of the window. it wouldn't be exactly centered under the window unless I modify the window too.
there is a lot of room in the center so I can have a big table with a dozen people if I care to. we just had a family party so I removed all the chairs from the kitchen and put 10 chairs in the living room so we ( she) made sandwiches and soup and of course pie..
that was a bit more casual than putting them all around a table and we enjoyed sitting around the fire. the windows you see were messed up , they had removed the original trim and cut the sills flush to the walls. I extended the sills and made the trim to match the others. the trim above the window is actually hollow boxes to save material but I liked the grain of that board so I split one 2x6 into 3 to make it work so they match. hard to see int he pics but I combined the window sill ( behind the old cabinet) with a wainscot cap so the same trim runs across the sill and also functions as the wainscot cap. the wainscott is the only MDF, I just couldnt' afford the fir stuff at the time I did it so I painted the MDF wainstcott.
I'm missing the trim piece below the two windows on the right. As you see there isn't a lot of space for a big backsplash. I forget that its missing but it should have something to prevent any spills going down the back it only really needs a simple thin wood strip to stop any water from going back there.
we dont use the microwave a lot we are thinking of relocating it but that's how it is today anyway.
there is probably some merit to doing a scale drawing and experimenting a bit with the layout to find possibilities and make choices. some have a great talent for visualizing colors and how things could fit together. for me if I can visualize it I can build what I imagine but Its a bit of an art to visualize good ideas and see things like drawer interference as mentioned earlier.
I didn't need a lazy suzan since I had no corners like that. I want the cabinetry that will extend to the right to incorporate most of the fridge. I had two pantries that weren't built like anything too special so I pulled one out so I could stick my huge fridge in there. otherwise the fridge seemed so overpowering. now it sticks out a foot so I can make all that flush with the cabinetry.
my fridge is stainless the dishwasher and stove are white. I'm not that particular about that I consider appliances to be temporary items anyway.
i went with butter yellow. I have some wainscot on two walls and I painted that the orangy color.. it sort of matches the wood colors. the ceiling I put just a tad of the yellow into white so you really cant' see the division where the yellow walls transfer into the white ceiling due to the way the colors reflect.
when I bought the house the whole ceiling was dropped to 8 feet. I removed the dropped ceiling to get the 9 foot ceiling back. just the bit at the end above the cabinets needed to stay at 8' I turned the whole thing , there was something nice about the sink facing the back yard but now that wall is unobstructed by cabinetry , sort of a trade off there.
the 50's cabinets were pink and salmon and they had done a crackled finish green sponge painted walls. I hate pink and we had that is different shades. the counters were tile but they used tile that was rounded over near the cracks so any spill went like a network of channels in the grout. It was horrible. I took all the walls apart and tackled the insulation and electrical before I built the kitchen. you can't have too many plugs. code requires a breaker for every plug so those 4 outlet boxes have 4- 15 amp breakers for example. if you look you'll find there are also some rules about how many plugs per foot of counter space. I just put lots and I would encourage that if you have room in the panel or if you can support a subpanel. most of the power requirements for a modern home are in the kitchen. In rooms like living room and bedrooms we dont use as many high amp appliances more lamps and radios and things, so some of those can be daisy chained. the code required spark fault breakers for bedroom plugs. arc fault breakers are for the outside plugs, the razor plug in the bathroom has its own ground fault protection device.
the floor was pretty chopped up so I took it all apart and patched a few areas restored the floor and did oil then poly. It had a lot of black nails so I bleached the floor then carefully dyed it with a tiny bit of stain until it matched the rest of my flooring. I restored all the floors on the main floor and the attic in a similar way so they all match they had all sorts of various layers of tile and stuff in there. .. only exception is the bath which needs a gut job. I have a few dents and marks the fir isnt' super hard but I like having the real wood floors back. Originally the kitchen had green battleship jute backed lino I believe.
I did not have a bathroom fan. I added a vent for it when I did some roofing so now I need to ad the vent in the bath and the fan I think I'll put in the attic in line with the vent so I can use an old style vent without the fan included.
If you go to a real lot of effort in cabinetmaking there could be somethign to making some of them free standing. If you really put your heart into the project then move, you could then choose to keep some of them.
Phil
I was very limited by width, though.