Replacing solid wood kitchen cabinets - wasteful and bad for the environment

[Anonymous]

Do people even consider the waste and impact to the environment when they rip out 20 year old solid wood cabinets because they want an updated look? It's so ignorant. How is wasteful = modern? to take out real solid wood and replace it with particle wood shipped from China. Insane!

[Anonymous]

What about 40 year old particle board? Is that allowed? Where do you draw the line?

[Anonymous]

You can always:
-Sell your old kitchen cabinets (we did this when we renovated about 15 years ago)
-donate your old kitchen cabinets to Habbitat for Humanity Restore or Community Forklift so they can get reused in someone else's kitchen, amd not end up in a landfill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do people even consider the waste and impact to the environment when they rip out 20 year old solid wood cabinets because they want an updated look? It's so ignorant. How is wasteful = modern? to take out real solid wood and replace it with particle wood shipped from China. Insane!

Because they look better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do people even consider the waste and impact to the environment when they rip out 20 year old solid wood cabinets because they want an updated look? It's so ignorant. How is wasteful = modern? to take out real solid wood and replace it with particle wood shipped from China. Insane!

Blah blah blah

[Anonymous]

OP, I hear you. I’ve been living with a kitchen I hate for over a decade because I hate the waste of throwing out perfectly good solid wood cabinets. We are starting to have a lot of issues with broken doors/hinges (we repaired and replaced a couple already) and there are also some things I would prefer to change (like better storage for baking sheets). Have you done cabinet refacing or have suggestions about how to do upgrades in a more environmentally friendly manner? I’d love recommendations for a kitchen designer who can take environmental costs into consideration but also form and function.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I hear you. I’ve been living with a kitchen I hate for over a decade because I hate the waste of throwing out perfectly good solid wood cabinets. We are starting to have a lot of issues with broken doors/hinges (we repaired and replaced a couple already) and there are also some things I would prefer to change (like better storage for baking sheets). Have you done cabinet refacing or have suggestions about how to do upgrades in a more environmentally friendly manner? I’d love recommendations for a kitchen designer who can take environmental costs into consideration but also form and function.

DP. I did some research, and it appears that repainting the cabinets - the heavy duty stuff where they take your doors to the factory, strip and reglaze them could be the way to go, but I am not clear what happens to the frames and other parts that stay behind. They can be painted in place, but is that any good? Would love for someone who's done it to comment.

[Anonymous]

Ah, this hits home. We bought our forever house and it had an old lady kitchen. Well actually, the kitchen was designed by a Hilsdale College newsletter receiving alarmist who literally sold the house because he thought the 2008 market crash and election of Obama meant society was collapsing. Then he regretted it and tried to get out of the contract. But I digress.

So the kitchen was these ugly square floral tiles, dark cabinets, a dark blue granite with light blue flecks, black appliances. I would never have chosen any of these things but I wasn't going to rip out perfectly good cabinets or counters, so I had the cabinets painted white, did a new subway tile backsplash to try to work with the counters, accepted the appliances, and laid a nice blue stone on the floor.

AND THEN . . . we went out of town and the previous owner had done a shoddy job creating the master bath out of an old sleeping porch. He didn't insulate the pipes and the temperature dropped and one of them burst, sending 20,000 gallons of water streaming through our kitchen. A hunk of drywall even fell off onto the stove and somehow started a fire! So in the end we got a new kitchen anyway. Oh well. We tried. I was actually sad because we'd made the kitchen work; it was very homey. All that water and then materials wasted, sigh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ah, this hits home. We bought our forever house and it had an old lady kitchen. Well actually, the kitchen was designed by a Hilsdale College newsletter receiving alarmist who literally sold the house because he thought the 2008 market crash and election of Obama meant society was collapsing. Then he regretted it and tried to get out of the contract. But I digress.

So the kitchen was these ugly square floral tiles, dark cabinets, a dark blue granite with light blue flecks, black appliances. I would never have chosen any of these things but I wasn't going to rip out perfectly good cabinets or counters, so I had the cabinets painted white, did a new subway tile backsplash to try to work with the counters, accepted the appliances, and laid a nice blue stone on the floor.

AND THEN . . . we went out of town and the previous owner had done a shoddy job creating the master bath out of an old sleeping porch. He didn't insulate the pipes and the temperature dropped and one of them burst, sending 20,000 gallons of water streaming through our kitchen. A hunk of drywall even fell off onto the stove and somehow started a fire! So in the end we got a new kitchen anyway. Oh well. We tried. I was actually sad because we'd made the kitchen work; it was very homey. All that water and then materials wasted, sigh.

Your home inspector SUCKED if they couldn’t spot something like uninsulated plumbing in a room with an exterior wall/floor

[Anonymous]

I agree with you OP. There's a lot that can be done with solid wood cabinets to make them look great. Tossing them makes no sense at all given what this planet and our children are facing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do people even consider the waste and impact to the environment when they rip out 20 year old solid wood cabinets because they want an updated look? It's so ignorant. How is wasteful = modern? to take out real solid wood and replace it with particle wood shipped from China. Insane!

We had ours professional refinished for this reason. Prob still not 100% environmentally friendly but we at least left the cabinets in place as they were also in good shape, just dated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do people even consider the waste and impact to the environment when they rip out 20 year old solid wood cabinets because they want an updated look? It's so ignorant. How is wasteful = modern? to take out real solid wood and replace it with particle wood shipped from China. Insane!

Blah blah blah

That was from a Chinese bot. It was trying to say buy, buy, buy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do people even consider the waste and impact to the environment when they rip out 20 year old solid wood cabinets because they want an updated look? It's so ignorant. How is wasteful = modern? to take out real solid wood and replace it with particle wood shipped from China. Insane!

Because they look better.

Wasteful is the new black.

[Anonymous]

I am so glad most people in the last century didn't pull outand trash the art and crafts woodwork and cabinets and install metal kitchen cabinets and particle board when it was in fashion.

[Anonymous]

How about toilets. Your feces should be used to fertilize your tomato plants