Cabinets Down the Corridor

When the woodwork went in, the house was still open. The aluminium frames were wearing their factory tape, some openings had no door in them yet, and sand was still piled outside the walkway, while the grey floor tiles and the white paint were already finished. More to the point, the walls had been built with two full-height openings left in them. This set was never going to stand against a wall — it had to go inside one.

Ours here are the two tall cabinets that sit inside those wall openings, the whole kitchen run — wall cabinets, counter and drawers, and the tall wood-lined bay at the end of it — and one low free-standing cabinet. The slatted ceiling, the doors and the aluminium frames are someone else's work. The tall cabinets fill their openings so completely that the fronts finish flush with the plaster, with no filler strip down either side. In the kitchen, one bay of the wall cabinets was cut to take a plate rack, and the rest stops exactly at the head of the window strip, so every awning sash still swings as it should.

The three sets sit in different parts of the house and all open the same way: not one handle stands out anywhere. The tall cabinets use a long vertical groove let into the door, the kitchen drawers and the low cabinet a horizontal groove along the edge. Every front is a flat slab with the grain running the same way. What separates this from ordinary built-in work is what you find when you open a door — the inside is the same wood as the front, shelves, sides and backs alike, not a cheaper board chosen because the door hides it.

Each set takes a different kind of use. The kitchen run meets heat, steam and wet hands every day. The tall cabinets are storage, opened and shut several times a day. The low cabinet gets lifted and pushed to a new spot for as long as it lasts. Reclaimed teak has already done its shrinking long before it was worked, so the clearances set around the doors at installation do not close up season by season until the fronts bind. And the colour deepens year by year — a newly finished house is the palest this wood will ever look.