Recycled Oak Cabinet Doors

This is a pile of red oak taken from a kitchen down in Washington, PA.  A customer was happy with their kitchen but really disliked the style of the cabinet doors.  The cabinet boxes were very well built and in good shape so all that was needed were some new doors to make the kitchen new again.  

When taking out the old doors (which were solid red oak), it was very tempting to just throw them in the dumpster.  That was the plan until that evening.  I was sitting on my front porch looking at my neighbors giant, 70+ year old red oak tree.  I started thinking about how long it took for that to look the way it does and then all the work it would take to mill it up and make it in to something.  So the next day, somehwat, half-heartedly, I unloaded them from my van to my shop rather than the dumpster. 

All of the metal hardware, was stripped off and sent to the scrap yard with a friend of mine.  The boards were ripped down, the old finish planed off and they were ready to be useful again.

Although it took some extra time and was somewhat labor-intensive to reuse them, I am very glad that I did.

From those kitchen cabinet doors, I was able to build 18 drawers and a new workbench top for my shop. (see below) If you know of anyone throwing away any old furniture or hardwoods, feel free to get in touch!