The Craft: Kitchen Cabinets

by Erik Ofgang, December 28, 2011

Computers and smart phones are not the only items that have advanced dramatically in recent years. Kitchen cabinets have also undergone a renaissance in both style and functionality said Mario Carpanzano, owner of Cabinet Designers, in Kingston.

“Cabinets today are about 90 percent different from cabinets from 10 or 20 years ago,” he says.

Carpanzano explains that today cabinets have under mount slides so you don’t see the mechanism that closes and opens drawers. Another standard feature is called the soft close, which prevents you from slamming drawers shut. “When you go to shut the drawer box, you cannot slam it because it stops,” he says. Other advances in the wide world of cabinetry include the finish used on the cabinet woods, which Carpanzano says is a more “durable, harder finish” that makes the cabinets easier to clean.

These advances are all among the reasons consumers decide to seek out new cabinets for their homes. Of course, the decision to buy new cabinets is just the first of many a consumer must make. After that, they have to decide what type of wood to use, what door style, and what type of finish.

Carpanzano says that the kitchen’s theme can influence which type of wood you use. “Are we doing a contemporary kitchen? Are we doing a country kitchen? Are we doing a rustic kitchen? If you’re doing a contemporary kitchen, you would not use oak. If you were doing contemporary you would use maple or cherry or a red birch,” he says. “Country kitchens often are painted. If I’m doing a log home, a rustic log home where there’s a lot of wood in the home, we suggest the painted [cabinets] because otherwise there’s just too much wood in the house.” Carpanzano adds that, in general, the wood he likes “to sell most is cherry. I think that’s a real good furniture wood.”