cabinets

2. Cabinets. Similar to windows, cabinets affect a wide range of tradespeople who are lined up to work directly after their installation. Flooring, tile and countertop installations are all linked to the casework in kitchens and baths. Ordering cabinets requires multiple layers of design and selection, including decisions on the layout of the room; the function of doors, drawers and hardware; wood and paint; and crown molding. A field measure is also necessary. Expect a floor plan and drawings showing how your cabinets will look straight on with complete measurements (also known as shop drawings). You'll need to approve these before production can start. Best practice: Narrow down the wood species and general style of the cabinets early on so that the biggest decisions are out of the way. Knowing the lead time from the cabinet shop is critical, and it doesn’t hurt to add an extra week to that to make sure your cabinets will arrive in time

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Logan Modular Wall System - $3,589.00 » Free-standing shelves — they have to be cheaper than a built-in unit. I also like the idea of being able to rearrange them. And if you move, you can take the whole set along with you!

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Here again, a wider-style Shaker door, flat-stock crown and lack of a footed detail to the cabinets puts this kitchen into a much more modern space while leveraging a style rooted in the 19th century.

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When extending your thinking from window, door and baseboard trim to cabinets, you'll often see Shaker-esque styles dotting the transitional landscape. These kitchen cabinets are a great example of how the Shaker style can be interpreted through a modern lens — with full-overlay doors substituting for the classic inset cabinet doors and the raised portion of the doors being much wider than usual — giving an unmistakable modern edge to a very classic style.

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3. Kitchens. It is ideal to have a window at your kitchen sink. But if you don't have that luxury (or you would prefer the extra cupboard space instead), take photographs of some favorite personal places and have them screen-printed onto glass cabinet doors.

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Renewable wood: Lyptus. These cabinets are made of Lyptus, a relatively new engineered product from a hybrid eucalyptus species grown on Brazilian plantations. Lyptus touts the beneficial traits of hardwood and reaches maturity in just 15 years, a quarter of the time needed for typical hardwoods. The appearance is similar to that of mahogany or cherry, with a fine grain.

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Renewable wood: bamboo. Bamboo is a rapidly renewable resource, and it's naturally stronger and harder than most other hardwoods. In this kitchen, Plyboo, an FSC-certified bamboo product, is set in a darker wood frame for an exotic look.

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Built-in storage is also a great way to cut down on countertop clutter. With space at a premium, these hidden spots are space savers and a great way to stay organized. I would love to be able to hide my mismatched spoons and spatulas in a drawer like this one.

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I love the built-in pantry shown here. Using the cabinet door front, it functions like a drawer, offering easy access to goods. This is something on my kitchen wish list.

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6. Emphasis on horizontal lines. You might not notice at first, but many modern kitchens share a tendency toward the horizontal: long, wide lines, stacks of drawer cabinets lined in a row, hardware set long and horizontal to accentuate the lines of the drawers. In this kitchen the floating panel of the back wall and the cutout accentuate the horizontal theme

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The grain of the walnut on this island is all this modern kitchen needs in terms of ornamentation

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5. Reliance on the beauty of natural materials. It's not to say that modern kitchens can't have a little bit of ornamentation, but when they do, they get it from the natural characteristics in a material, such as the horizontal grain of oak when it's rift cut or the natural beauty and veining of marble.

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2. Frameless, full-overlay cabinet construction. A bunch of terms are thrown around to describe this type of cabinet construction: frameless, Euro frameless, overlay, full overlay. They all mean the same thing, that the door overlays the cabinet box. This style is the most often used in modern kitchens because it's sleeker than a flush-inset cabinet, which is often associated with more traditional kitchen, cabinet and furniture design.

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VÄRDE Glass-door wall cabinet - $199.00 » When the doors are closed on a frameless cabinet, you can't see the frame at all except for about a ⅛-inch shadow line between cabinets

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ollout pantry. It is easier to put the groceries away quickly if you don't have to fumble around in deep cabinets trying to see what you have and where everything should go, or pulling out a lot of smaller items so you can put bigger items in behind them. And when it comes time to wipe down the shelves in your cabinets, these are easier to reach. If you're getting ready to remodel your kitchen or designing a new one, I hope some of these tips help you create a kitchen that will be a joy to use and a cinch to clean.

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Recycling and trash. Having your recycling bins and trash can on rollout shelves in one spot makes it a snap to sort items. This is a big time saver if you can avoid multiple trips to the garage or even outside, where recycle bins often reside.

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Undersink cleaning supplies. When it's time to clean, who wants to get down on hands and knees and feel around in the dark spot behind the garbage disposal looking for cleaning products? A drawer under the kitchen sink lets you pull everything into easy view and within reach

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Savvy receptacle placement. Using a receptacle strip like this mounted under your cabinets keeps the outlets as far as possible from splashes and splatters. It means less time cleaning the receptacles and also makes it easier to wipe down your backsplash. Perhaps we're just shaving seconds off your cleaning time here, but I like this idea. Another great spot out of the splash zone for electrical receptacles is on the end of your base cabinets.

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Customized pot and pan storage. I hate crouching down to put away pots, pans and their lids in a regular cupboard. It takes time to pull out the smaller ones so you can reach back in to put away larger pots — then you have to put all of the smaller ones back in. Having an organized rollout drawer makes it easy to put pots and lids away. Even the ones that go in the back

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Cabinet style and a little more on flooring. Avoid ornate moldings on your cabinetry. They are pretty, but it takes extra time to wipe around all the nooks and crannies. Slab-front cabinets are the easiest to wipe off. Shaker style is another good choice, and it blends with any kitchen style, from traditional to contemporary. This floor looks like wood but is actually porcelain tile planks. You can also use luxury vinyl tile planks in a wood look. They are very convincing, are resistant to water and require nothing but damp mopping.

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Cabinet Stains Torn between painting your wood cabinets or leaving them in their unadorned beauty? Luckily, there is a compromise. Staining your cabinets can add subtle color to your kitchen but still retain the texture and original wood grain.

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Perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright's most celebrated design, Fallingwater owes much of its visual success to the design freedom given by the steel-framed windows.

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