In lieu of buying gifts and cards for our customers and suppliers this year, we have elected to make a donation to the Cowichan Valley Basket Society. We hope you find this to be an acceptable alternative.
Of course, we also wish to take this opportunity to:
Thank all our customers for their businessMerry Christmas from Gillingham Cabinets!
The choice that has the most effect on the look and feel of your kitchen is the type of material, the colour, and the style of your cabinet doors. To better explain the options we offer, we divide them into two categories: Wood and non-wood finishes.
Our wood cabinet doors offer the rich, authentic feel of real wood in your home. The type or “species” of wood has a big impact on the finish and look of a kitchen, and there is much more information on the wood species should you wish to delve a little deeper on our “Characteristics of Wood” page.
Non-wood finishes offer a greater selection of colours, construction, and shapes generally at a lower price. They usually a bit easier to clean and care for.
By “style” of the door we mean the manner in which it is constructed, as well as the the shapes or profiles of the edges and the “rails.” Examples of door styles are ’5 piece construction’, slab, shaker, and glass-mullion.
The material may be a solid wood such as maple, oak, or cherry. It may be a wood veneer, or the wide selection of colours and patterns offered in non-wood materials like PVC, melamine, or laminate.
If you enjoyed this article, you may be interested to read another in our Series on Cabinet Choices, such as the one on Metabox, Tandembox, and Dovetail Drawers or on Cabinet Interiors: White, Maple Melamine, and Birch-plywood. This article previously appeared on our main website, but is reposted here because our cabinet choices series is proving so popular!
We’re proud of having cut our carbon footprint in half in the past 3 years, as you will have seen mentioned elsewhere on our website. I’ve finished measuring our carbon footprint for this year, and have come up with some numbers that any extra-green-keen customers out there might wish to use to calculate how much carbon-footprint was involved in producing their kitchen.
| 2008-09 | 2009-10 | 2010-11 | |
| kg CO2e per Cabinet1 | 28.2 | 22.0 | 18.0 |
| Reduction since 2008-2009 | 22% | 36% |
1 – CO2e: Carbon Dioxide Equivalent, the standard measurement of carbon footprint.
So for an average kitchen that has 12 cabinets, made in 2010-2011 we would have created: 12 x 18 kg = 216kg of CO2e during the making of that kitchen.
This does not include the carbon-footprint of the wood used in the cabinets. I looked into assessing the carbon footprint of the wood used, but because wood traps/sequesters carbon, it decays over time, and carbon-based energy is also used during the extraction of the wood, it’s a complicated issue. Here are two sources for example.
Arguably you could consider your cabinets to be reducing your carbon footprint by actually storing carbon, but according to the Climate Smart Methodology we follow, what is most important is to measure what we contribute and can control, because that is where we can make direct improvements. We’re definitely proud of the improvements we’ve been able to make – as we projected with our comprehensive recycling program, our landfill waste has been reduced by over 95%!
Another key choice when buying cabinets is what material to select for the interior of your cabinets. At Gillingham Cabinets, our three main options for cabinet case material are White Melamine, Maple Melamine, and Birch-Plywood Interiors. All of our cabinets are made from low-VOC, CARB-compliant wood sheets to safeguard both the environment and the health of your family.
White Melamine is by far our most popular option for several good reasons and is our standard option when quoting cabinet prices.
White is a good choice for the interior of cabinets, because most cabinets don’t have lighting inside them, so white simply makes the insides as bright as possible. Melamine is a durable, easy to clean, modern material and is applied to a 100% recycled wood-core of particleboard. It’s widely used in the kitchen cabinet industry and yields sturdy cabinets when constructed properly. Our standard core thickness is 16mm (5/8 inch) thick, but you may find some manufacturers using flimsier 1/2 inch material. Continue reading
When searching for your kitchen style, a good way to begin is by browsing through kitchen and home magazines. Tear out the pictures of kitchens that you like, spread them out on a table, look closely at them
and try to answer the following questions for yourself:
This exercise can help you identify the style that you would like to see in your home. It will give you a clearer picture that you can share with us – your kitchen design professionals. Of course we want to see them! Happy Clipping!
Pro Tip: If you are web-savy, you may like to try using a great site called Houzz.com to create an “ideabook.” Here’s a previous post we made about using Houzz for your photo-clipping.
