The Natural Characteristics of Wood:
What to Expect from Wood and Wood Finishing

With Non-Wood cabinets, the colours and patterns are reliable and consistent. With wood doors and cabinets however, some variation is inevitable.

"Nature creates, but never duplicates," so no two pieces of wood - even from the same tree - are ever the exactly the same. Due to differences in natural colour and grain, each piece of wood will also react differently to the stains and finishing materials used.

Contrasting grain patterns and shades in wood parts add to the natural beauty of the wood solids and veneers. The beauty of wood cabinetry really comes from the true natural qualities of the wood itself.

Maple	Oak	Cherry

Gillingham Cabinets uses only select solid hardwoods and hardwood veneers. Natural wood varies in colour from shades of white, red black and even green in areas. Mineral streaks may be visible where parts of the tree have absorbed minerals differently in one area than in another. Occasional pin knots are inherent to natural wood cabinets.

Grain and apparent textures will vary from quite-even to absolutely random and these natural variations will be present throughout your kitchen. They may occur on adjacent cabinets, between pairs of doors and drawers on the same cabinet, even within the same panel. These same variations will be seen on the edges of hardwood veneered doors or flush styled door and drawer fronts where solid lumber cores are exposed due to the finish.

We call your attention to these characteristics because the effect of these variations in an entire kitchen may be different from what you visualize now in viewing a smaller display or finished sample. The variations are broad; but they are part of the beauty of natural wood.

We also mention these conditions because neither Gillingham Cabinets, nor your Gillingham Cabinets dealer can be responsible for the type or degree of variation that you may experience in your actual kitchen.

More Info

This document explains in much greater detail about wood finishing and the different types of wood species that we can use in your cabinets.