Recycling - kitchen cupboards

We’ve installed a few kitchens over the years, and in all of them we have made extensive use of recycled materials.

I have to say we can’t go past IKEA for the base cabinets. Their system is so simple, flexible and easy to use that it makes setting up the structure painless. I do feel a bit guilty about using melamine units, but we have to be conscious of providing a squeaky clean environment for our guests, so it’s an obvious easy-clean option.

The kitchen in our first cottage, White Gum, was made from IKEA bases, with recycled hoop pine from old Queenslander houses for the doors and drawer fronts. 

Recycled hoop pine kitchen - White Gum Cottage

Russell used old silver forks to bend into handles. 

Silver forks become door handles

We used hoop pine again for the kitchen of our house in Toowong, where we lived before moving to Mount Glorious.  

New kitchen from hoop pine - Miskin St, Toowong

The old kitchen we had pulled out at Toowong (a real shocker) had a few further incarnations. First it was a work bench in our shed here. It then got reused as a temporary kitchen in Rose Gum, which we were living in while we were working on the house when we first moved up the mountain. Most of it finally got turfed, but the drawer unit was resurrected to be incorporated into the new kitchen in Rose Gum. 

Constructing the kitchen in Rose Gum Cottage

Both the bench top and the cupboard and drawer fronts in our new cottage kitchen are ironbark. It’s a beautiful, very hard wood. We had a few boards left over after having floors laid in the B&B suite in the house, and they were way too beautiful to waste. To continue the theme from our first cottage, Russell has again made his fork handles. 

Completed kitchen in Rose Gum Cottage