Bring back the look of great-grandmother’s classic kitchen cabinets – the ones that looked so fresh and bright next to the ice-box. Their crisp, clean lines emphasized a clean, efficient kitchen with a place for everything – possibly including a pantry full of a season’s canning, along with an entrance to a well-stocked root cellar.
You can add your own special touches to sturdy white cabinets that can house your dishes, pots and pans and canned goods just as well as they did for grandma. Include a windowsill of potted, edible herbs, or a copper hanging basket for storing onions, and fruit. Add a banana saver to the counter – the perfect place to hang those supermarket green bananas.
Even if your kitchen includes one of those 1960’s olive refrigerators, you can make it work with white cabinets. Refrigerator magnets can reflect the clean lines of these practical, attractive cabinets, as can a display of recipes, notes to family and even handwork by the youngsters in your household or extended family.
If your cabinets are real antiques, you can refurbish them with genuine milk paint – the paint that was often used on home furnishings. Dress up worn cabinets with new fasteners but make sure to keep the theme that reflects the feel of the kitchen. Glass knobs were often used, and turnbuckles instead of the more modern clip or magnet door fasteners.
Don’t forget to add some comfortable kitchen chairs around a sturdy table, painted to match the cabinets. The real secret of grandma’s kitchen was that excellent space for doing homework, talking to family as well as providing a work surface for making cakes, pies and homemade bread. But you don’t have to do all that to recreate the atmosphere that once centered around the busiest room in the house: grandma’s kitchen.
