Cabinets are a pain in the ass...

Cabinets.

are.

expensive.

I did not know this about kitchens until now. They are boxes. BFD, right? Well, try telling that to a mill worker who has to spend hours on dovetail joints and spotless finishes. Tell that to the guy fussing over wood grain patterns and getting the lacquer to reflect light in just the right way. Tell that to the guy who has to breath the toxic chemicals typically used to seal and stain those boxes. And tell that to the guy dealing with the crappy compounds used to stabilize the wood. Lots of the stuff traditionally used to make the boxes that hold your dishes involve a lot of compounds that will kill you.

...oh, and over time, some of those compounds leach out in the form of gases slowly emitted over time...

OK, so cabinets are almost justified in their insane expense. And there are some health issues that are worthy of avoidance. This is where green cabinetry comes in. How do you get cabinets into your house that are healthy for both YOUR environment and THE environment? (After all, lots of cabinets help to bring down our essential old-growth forests.) And how do you do it without wrecking your budget.

As noted previously, we are interested in green cabinets. There are a lot of alternative materials out there to minimize wood usage (and the chemicals that come with it). Unfortunately for us, they all came in at twice or three times the cost of just going with the standard old growth forest wood doors with off-gassing cyanide (for real, not a joke, think about that getting on your dishes, eh?). We looked at a local cabinet company that does semi-custom stuff trucked up from North Carolina (option A). We looked at the local green supply place and got basic quotes from the largest national maker of green cabinets that came in double the option A cost (making it B). And we consulted a local green cabinet maker who makes and applies his own veneers (more on that in a bit) and has no transportation carbon footprint (his factory is around the corner from my band's practice space). The local green guy initially came in 3X the option A cost. We talked him down to pricing comparable with option B.

This is where Jeremy, once again, proved his worth. On a previous job, he had worked with an online outfit called cabparts to purchase melamine boxes for which he built doors. Brilliant. Melamine is considered an environmentally-sound alternative to the wood used in standard cabinet boxes. It holds up well and researchers do not note the same off-gassing concerns that they have with normal cabinetry. Plus...it is pretty cheap.

That left the very visible doors. If you have not watched the multi-media tour on the left, check it out. This project will leave us with an entire floor-to-ceiling wall of cabinets. So the look of the doors is pretty essential to ensuring that all the money spent on this addition does not look junky... He suggested a local mill worker that had done nice work, particularly with his finishes. After a lot of back and forth, it was decided that rather than using large slabs of wood, a green alternative would look great and perhaps fit our project better (there was concern about "cupping" or bending in the 7' doors over time if they were a single piece of wood). Instead, the doors will be made of an MDF core (medium density fiberboard) which is made from wood production waste (no new trees felled). The core is wrapped with a veneer of real wood---in our case "quarter sawn ribbon mahogany" Yeah, I know, rain forest hard wood...but it is only a fraction of an inch thick (3 mm), so this is the best use of the wood allowing for commercial applications that make stewardship balance economic and conservation needs (maybe I am just trying to convince myself it is OK...). That is the grain pattern, without any sealant or finish, above. Should be gorgeous---I love the color, pattern, and luminosity.

Admittedly, this is not a perfect solution. Yeah, there is an issue with the veneers. And MDF is better for the environment, but still uses formaldehyde in its manufacture processing so there are still some health concerns raised. But, for us, it turns into a great option. We feel better about our environmental decisions (limited wood use and less carbon footprint in transport) AND the combined vendors give us an excellent look for just about the same price as our original option A. In this pricey project, we need more good stories like this...