I know I've seen this type of picture somewhere. I'm digging but no luck yet...I'll keep trying to get a link.

Wow, this is a challenge! I thought for sure that I'd seen loads of kitchens like this but they're nearly all the "framed" beadboard cabinets!

Here's one. Not an awesome picture, but the cabinets are right.

This kitchen is, I think, what we call "unfitted," but the cabinet shown in this picture is kind of what you're after.

Some of these cabinets have a wider beadboard than what I'm used to, like this one.

I can't really tell if these cabinets are the "framed" style or not, but this kitchen is so cute!

My 8-year-old is harrassing me for not paying attention to him every waking moment, so I'll try to find more later!

Ooooh, I just remembered something (threw Henry a fruit snack to distract him! LOL)...

Try Googling for Amish cabinetry. I know Amish Loft makes some absolutely lovely, simple door styles. ("P" and "Q" would look less barny without the red!) Not much in the way of a gallery there, though.

Good luck, and let us know what you find! I love "researching!" :)

OMG, I love those red cabinets!!!!
Diane

johnmari,

Your picture reminded me of the original kitchen cabinets in my uncle's farm house, about the same vintage as yours. There was one wall of cabinets that were beadboard floor to ceiling, all flush with no framing or spacing between, looked like a solid wall. When you opened them there were different shelves, compartments and even a pull out flour bin. The closures were the black metal squares with a knob that turned the latch on the other side (the name for them escapes me at the moment). No counter tops back then, I guess they used the kitchen table.

That house is falling down now, but I absolutely loved those cabinets. So my point (I actually had one!) is that the beadboard cabinets you are thinking of would be just right for your farmhouse. I hope you find the perfect ones. I would think they would be an easy cabinet to build so maybe you can find someone who builds custom and it wouldn't be an outrageous price? That way you'd get exactly what you want.

A funny coincidence, we are planning beadboard on the walls in our new kitchen, thinking of painting them red, so it will be opposite of the picture you posted (no wonder I liked them, hmm)! We are going for the new house/old house look.

Jill

johnmari, we had inset cabs made with wider bead boards. Most have 2-3 boards. Two narrow ones only have one. No frame around the actual door but the frame of the cabs have a bead. We used hand forged butterfly hinges and small back iron knobs. We painted them barn red and they certainly look like old cabinets.

larzebub, thank you SO much - you are so kind as to hunt those down for me! I ran every permutation of search terms I could think of and all I could find were those darn semi-Shaker ones that I specifically DON'T want. Nothing wrong with them, just not what I want. (Heehee on throwing Henry a fruit snack... I do that with my dog when he gets too pushy, although I'm sure Henry wouldn't like the liver jerky the dog gets!) I was able to save those to my idea file. The Amish Loft cabinets are gorgeous but the price made me blow my Diet Coke out my nose. :-) Sadly there are no Amish where I live (NH) but I will cruise their sites to see if I can find anything in gallery pics.

Jill, the photo of the red cabinets was swiped from the website of the local company that makes them, Young Furniture (although they do primarily cabinets now) out of Bow, NH, about 40 miles away. They're sold unfinished, which also saves a LOT of money, but a friend of ours is good with a paint sprayer and is willing to barter with us. I've seen them in person at the lumberyard and they're nice and sturdy despite being quite inexpensive (think splitting the difference between Ikea and Kraftmaid, leaning toward the Ikea end of the spectrum). Depending on the cabinet layout we'd try to use exposed hinges instead of their standard knife hinges on the doors, and as many doubled doors as we can so we can use thumb-turn latches, sometimes called pantry latches, instead of knobs, to increase the "always been here" look.

It's actually possible that the original kitchen may have had similar cabinets to start with, since we found the remains of a pantry cabinet that had beadboard sides and door out in the shed. I too remember seeing them in old houses when I was younger, especially those where the cabinets were homemade, probably because the slab doors were very forgiving. This was probably a millworker's house so nothing fancy would have gone into it - there are hundreds in this old mill town just like this one, with minor variations like porch/no porch or bay window/no bay window (we lucked into both a porch and bay window, such luxury!), but the style of house we call a "New Englander" here is just as much at home in a densely settled town neighborhood or on a potato farm.

eandhl, I absolutely adore inset-door cabinets but sadly, I can pretty much guarantee that they will never, ever be in the budget unless we win the lottery (at which time we offer the people who own the brick bungalow down the street an obscene amount of money and put this one up for rent LOL). We'll be working on a very small budget because the list of work the house needs is as long as your arm. Maybe both your arms. ;-)

johnmari,

"thumb latches" that's the term! Those would look great on your beadboard cabinets. I didn't understand that those pictured were the actual ones you can get locally, sounds like a good deal and they look nice. In our last house, I painted the kitchen cabinets a brick red (third time the charm after original dark 70's oak to green, to cream & then the perfect red which was Oops paint from HD). DH will be building my new house cabinets in either oak or ash inspired by a vintage kitchen cupboard I have with the cross beam side construction, no way he'd go for painting them. So I'll get red in the painted beadboard.

Actually, I don't think I will show him the picture of the beadboard cabinets, he may realize how much simpler they would be to build instead of the framed, "T" design I have in mind for the doors. ;-)

Jill

So strange. You guys are describing the kitchen that my dad built for my mom about half a century ago. Not much money after buying the house, and my dad used old paneling that he refinished to build the cabinets. As they could afford it, they changed to iron fittings. I was just looking for the only photo I have of it, but I must have it stored away somewhere. Wish you could see it.

Love those cabinets. When I finally get around to my kitchen, I want to build plain plank early-Shaker style cabs. Because my kitchen is so oddly shaped, the cabs would have to be specially built in place anyway. And these kind of cabs are so easy to do with a router.

Dayle Ann

I'm not usually a painted-wood person at all - I usually recoil in horror LOL - but paint-grade poplar is SOOOOO much less expensive than stained hardwood, especially the pricey stuff I like best such as quartersawn oak! :-) If the pieces of pantry cabinet we found are anything to go by, the original cabinets were probably white-painted pine, although I'm not that into white for a whole kitchen. I have my eye on that sort of midtone, slightly muddy, sagey-olivey green so common just before and after the turn of the 19th-20th century - I am a total copper freak and that color sets off old copperware so beautifully, and there are touches of it in the rugs and window treatments for adjoining rooms. And, if I do a cheaper sort of cabinet that I still like, I might be able to afford niceties like a couple of little pieces of local soapstone to do the short bits of counter on each side of the sink (butcher block for the other countertop run) and a vintage drainboard sink. Square footage-wise I have a fairly big kitchen for a 1300sf house, 12'x16', but the only really feasible layout given doesn't give us very much cabinet or counter space at all.

The notion of my DH building cabinets would make a cat laugh. :-)

Dayle Ann, I've shown that picture to several people who said "why would you want to build a kitchen that looks like what everyone else is ripping out?" *chuckle* Fun to hear about your dad building similar ones decades ago. It does seem to be a pretty classic sort of style especially in more countryish areas; there was also a fad for "Early American" everything (about as authentically Early American as the typical American "Tuscan" kitchen!) in the Fifties so your dad's kitchen may have actually been "in style"!

johnmari,

I can envision your green cabinets, especially with the copper. The copper would get lost with the red.

Quartersawn oak... if only I could. Our current addiction is to clear oak boards, 1x4's & 1x6's for trim, and they are spendy enough!

My DH is a contractor/builder and so it has been nice to get things done at home while he was off for a couple of months over winter. Once the weather improves, he's off to paying jobs, so my cabinets may not be a reality until next fall/winter. Right now I am just begging for the boxes and I can wait for the doors.

We (mostly he) have built this house ourselves and are living in it while it is finished (not recommended for the less adventurous soul). It's amazing what you can make do without. It'll be great when it is done though.

Jill

If you're still visiting this - your photo is from Young Furniture Manufacturing's catalog. I'm looking at it right now. We are getting their cabs, which are solid real wood, no particle board, for our kitchen. We visited their factory in Bow, New Hampshire and are very impressed. They will do custom work for you also. I believe they ship their cabs around the country, it's difficult however, even here in New England to find showrooms (other than their factory) that have full set-ups of their cabs. If you find this, post back! Did you already redo your kitchen???

Crown Point makes batten style beadboard doors. The door doesn't have a frame, but they are framed cabinets (inset).
I installed a kitchen and bath in this style last year. They were painted, and also mixed with raised panel doors, and glass doors.
Casey

Yes, I know they are from Young's, I said so eighth post down. My original query had simply been for more pictures using that style cabinet, they were/are very few and far between.

Crown Point... *chuckle-sigh* Crown Point is really beautiful, have seen their work on a couple of gawk-at-rich-people's-houses-for-charity ;-) tours and at several home expos - since they're local they've always trucked in a kitchen for the larger expos. But, "overimprovement" wouldn't begin to describe it, both for the house and for the neighborhood. Not to mention that we'd have to win the lottery! (Frankly if we won the lottery I think I'd rather move. I hate this neighborhood - it's what's euphemistically referred to as "transitional" and we thought it was improving when we bought the house but it's going even further downhill instead - and the house isn't too far behind.)

Kitchen redo is not in the picture at this point due to lack of funding - I am stuck with my disintegrating particleboard cabinets for a while longer, probably a few years. I don't know where PO found this stuff but it makes that flat-pack stuff from Home Depot (used to be Mills Pride, I think they call it "Distinction" now) look like it belongs in the White House.

ohh this is so exciting I was looking for these doors myself when i came acrossed your post. I have about 1/2 dozen of these in my pantry I just bought an old farm house, the old owner took out the old cupboard doors and put in new ones threw the old ones on the local dump a few years back, I wanted to scream so disappointing. I have been searching high and low for a restorer who would have them in stock I found them once in a search for old hardware for my tub which is an old clawfoot tub. the plumbing doesn't work on it. I didn't save the darn page but as soon as I find it i will send you the link the had just the doors not the cupboards them selfs.

I found what you looking for I found the site they only have a few more left.

Here is a link that might be useful: cool stuff is cool stuff

That should read "kitchen of my circa 1919 house" not "1919 kitchen." There is beadboard on the walls that I assume is original, but the cabinets are more recent, wouldn't you think?

graywings, I'm no expert, but the cabinet doors seem to be in great shape, and the beveled edge looks more modern to me. My husband's cousin lives in a cobbled together 100 year old log house on a ranch and has old frameless-beadboard-door cabinets (no beveled edge). The drawers even have old cup pulls. I thought it ironic that her comfortable old kitchen had the same look I'm going for. Their house also has lots of little rooms, and I think the cozy privacy of it all might just beat out the whole open floor plan thing we moderns tend to favor.

graywings,

I think your cabinets are more to the 60-70's era due to the adjustable shelving and the hinges look like ones we had in a prior home built in the 70's.

They are cute, though. Looks like they have been painted, maybe were originally stained wood.

Jill

Thanks for the confirmation that these cabinets are not something I need to keep around.

So much time has passed since the original post .... but, there is a hybrid, unframed source out there ... believe it or not - IKEA. Just, good luck getting any help with size and layouts. Their software for design is trash from my experience - fails nearly always so you have to travel to the store for design and fulfilment. Hope the store is close because the design is clean and great for jazzing up a small kitchen re-do.