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.
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.
Cabinets consist of six-sided wooden boxes or "carcass" closed on five sides with a door or drawers on the sixth.
Cabinets may be either face-frame or frameless in construction. Each option provides features and drawbacks.
In Europe, there is a DIN standard dimension where the height of a base unit is 720mm + 150mm for the bottom plinth and 40mm for worktop thickness, providing a working surface height of 910mm with an area of 600mm x 600 mm. This "60cm square" horizontal area (or its multiples) accommodates many standard floor-standing electrical appliances.
Cabinet doors may feature a variety of materials such as wood, metal or glass. Wood may be solid wood ("breadboard" construction) or engineered wood or may be mixed (e.g. engineered wood panel in a solid wood frame)
A functional design objective for cabinet interiors involves maximization of useful space and utility in the context of the kitchen workflow. Drawers and trays in lower cabinets permit access from above and avoid uncomfortable or painful crouching.
In face-frame construction, a drawer or tray must clear the face-frame stile and is 2 inches (51 mm) narrower than the available cabinet interior space. The loss of 2 inches is particularly noticeable and significant for kitchens including multiple narrow [15-inch (380 mm) or less] cabinets.
In frameless construction, drawer boxes may be sized nearly to the interior opening of the cabinet providing better use of the available space.
However, the same is not true for trays. Even in the case of frameless construction doors and their hinges when open block a portion of the interior cabinet width. Since trays are mounted behind the door, trays are typically significantly narrower than drawers. Special hinges are available that can permit trays of similar width as drawers but they have not come into wide use.
Shelves provide in all cases more storage space than drawers or trays, but are less accessible.
Stock wall-oven cabinets may be adapted to built-in ovens, coffee-makers, or other appliances by removing portions of the cabinet and adding trim panels to achieve a flush installation.
Frameless cabinets provide for wall oven front panel widths equal to the cabinet width (see above). In such an installation the oven front panel occupies a similar profile as a cabinet door. Accordingly, frameless installations for wall-oven make most efficient use of the available wall space in a kitchen.
This effect is difficult to achieve in typical face-frame cabinet installations, as it requires modification to the face-frame (essentially eliminating the face-frame at the oven cut-out).
Cabinets may be finished with opaque paint, opaque lacquer and transparent finishes such as lacquer or varnish. Decorative finishes include distressing, glazing, and toning. The choice of finish can affect the cabinet's color, sheen (from flat to high gloss), and feel.
Hardware is the term used for metal fittings incorporated into a cabinet extraneous of the wood or engineered wood substitute and the countertop. The most basic hardware consists of hinges and drawer/door pulls, although only hinges are an absolute necessity for a cabinet since pulls can be fashioned of wood or plastic, and drawer slides were traditionally fashioned of wood. In a modern kitchen it is highly unusual to use wood for a drawer slides owing to the much superior quality of metal drawer slides/sides.
Drawers and trays make it easier to access a cabinet's contents. They are a substantial benefit because they reduce bending and squatting. The only drawback is slightly less usable space which is taken up by the slides as well as door clearances. A typical drawer is 5 inches (130 mm) narrower than a comparable shelf. A drawer can usually hold about 75 to 100 lb (34 to 45 kg) for ordinary use. Using slides, mounted on the side (reducing width slightly) or bottom (completely out of sight), a drawer or tray can be extended considerably with a smooth, linear motion using minimum effort.
Drawer extension is the exposed proportion of a fully extended drawer. Traditional drawers with wood-on-wood runners can only be extended about three-quarters; however, modern runners enable full-extension drawers. A slide's design parameters are its height, depth, extension, weight rating, durability, serviceability, and smoothness of operation.
New varieties of hinges and slides have been developed that enhance the action and usability of doors and drawers.
There is a large variety of specialty hardware for kitchen cabinets. Special hardware for corner and other blind cabinets makes their contents more easily accessible. They may be in the form of lazy susans with or without a wedge cut out or of tray slides which enable the hidden corner space to be occupied with trays that slide both laterally and forwards/backwards. Sponge drawers use special hinges that fit between the cabinet front and the sink.
Before buying cabinets, precise measurements are essential otherwise there may be un-utilized space, cabinets may not fit, or there may be interference between various elements of the kitchen, such as doors and drawers. Note that European cabinets typically have different sizes than ones in North America, and are typically built in multiples of 100mm, with 600mm wide being a common size.
Buyers can buy pre-built "stock" cabinets for fast delivery which usually arrive in a week or less. In contrast, custom-made cabinets can have longer delivery times, such as four weeks.
Cabinet dimensions are specified with width first, height second, depth last. The width–height–depth is a generally accepted convention. A 18x36x12 cabinet is therefore 18 inches (460 mm) wide, 36 inches (910 mm) tall, and 12 inches (300 mm) deep. Sometimes upper cabinets are presumed to be 12 inches (300 mm) deep, so only the width and height are given. For example, a "W1836" label means wall-mounted cabinet [12 inches (300 mm) deep] is 18 inches (460 mm) wide and 36 inches (910 mm) high.
Custom cabinetry, while expensive, can fit the available space attractively, and can fit into walls which aren't exactly flat or straight. They can combine more than one opening and eliminate unsightly doubled stiles in face-frame installations as well as bring aesthetic appeal using unusual woods or finishes. Custom cabinets sometimes offer inset cabinet doors, and can match existing or period furniture styles. It's sometimes possible to mix custom and stock cabinetry which have identical finishes.
Cabinets can be purchased from specialty retailers, kitchen remodelers, home centers, on-line retailers, and ready-to-assemble furniture manufacturers. Some installers offer a package deal from measurement, to construction, to installation.
Cabinets are sometimes delivered in fully assembled form. Carcasses should be inspected carefully before installation, since defects are difficult to repair after installation. Ready-to-assemble furniture cabinets are lower-in-cost and are delivered in a flat box. Some courses teach homeowners how to build their own cabinets.