Kitchen Cabinets Reviewed

When you are thinking of remodeling your kitchen, you have a large variety of choices for your redesign. You can replace, repaint or reface the kitchen cabinets. Or you may decide to do something different like glazing your kitchen cabinets.

If you do want update your existing cabinets, the options are many and varied. Let's take a look at a few of them.

An Eco Friendly Choice for your Kitchen

Bamboo kitchen cabinets are a popular way to use more sustainable wood products for the kitchen, a hot subject indeed. Bamboo is technically considered a grass, and is very fast growing. It can be harvested after just 5 or 6 years.

Even though it's a grass, bamboo is sometimes called "green steel" because of its strength. It is harder than many traditional hardwoods, and has exceptional dimensional stability, so bamboo cabinets will keep functional and strong for many years. It is attractive in it's normal light wood appearance, but can be stained to many different finishes.

The major vendors for bamboo kitchen cabinets used to be located only in California, such as Laguna Cabinets and AlterEco company, but in the last few years there have been companies like Mr Bamboo that have developed a retail presence in most of the major cities in the US.

For the Do-It-Yourself types there are a host of books available to get you started on building your own cabinets. Actually, reading one of these books is a great way to familiarize yourself with the details of cabinets, and can easily pay for itself by making you a smart shopper.

Black in the kitchen is very trendy right now. Black cabinets are best used in contrast to other elements in the kitchen, either with an earthen palate or using a throwback look of black and white checkerboard look. The same effect can be used for the backsplash or wall tile. White countertops give an opposite contrast with black kitchen cabinets as well. They also mix well with stainless steel appliances, giving the high tech look to your kitchen.

Another way to use black cabinets is as an accent piece in a more traditional kitchen that is primarily using hardwood cabinets. A great example of this is to use black cabinets in the kitchen island to highlight it, and then hardwood for the rest of the cabinets.

White cabinets are one of the most popular choices. White can work with a lot of other colors, and give the kitchen a bright and airy feel to it. Almost any color can be used for the wallpaper or paint and come off looking good with white cabinets. Since the cabinets are painted or laminated, the wood quality doesn't have to be as good, so white kitchen cabinets are also fairly cost effective.

White cabinets are popularly found in seaside homes using the palate of sea foam, blue, or blue and yellow as the popular contrasting color. Also in the setting, you will find white everything throughout the house and the accents will create the contrast needed with an all white room. Imagine a white palate with a huge window overlooking the blue sea - the blue sea is the contract color!

Of course, any white décor shows dirt more easily, and the kitchen is the worst room in the house for that. The flip side is that you don't have many worries about possible problems with cleaning products and the furniture finish.

A few years ago we updated our kitchen. This included granite counter tops, new light fixtures, a backsplash, and painted walls and ceilings. No cabinet work was done but the effect of all the other updates made the cabinets look new and everyone thought we had a new floor, as we were told by visitors. While this lens is about kitchen cabinets, the total effect an updating project can create may surprise you!

In our next update, I would like to install the slidable shelves in my cabinets. I hope this doesn't involve replacing all the cabinets just to get those shelves, but it will sure makes access easier.