I’m looking at refacing all the kitchen cabinets. The current ones were supposedly beech with a cherry color. But they’re veneered – if you can call something slightly thinner than Kleenex a veneer. After less than 4 years, the veneers have disolved on those cabinets near sinks (and I do mean disolved!).
Anyway, don’t want to spring for the price of real cherry (about $9 bf locally), and birch is too splotchy when stained/dyed. So, anyone here got some suggestions what I might try.
Thanks in advance.
Bob
Replies
See the ongoing discussion about soft maple in the wood and materials category. I've been building stuff with soft maple stained a rose color by mineral seepage into the wood. I assume this happens when the tree dies and is cut while standing dead. The color occurs throughout the wood. I think if you go through the bin of soft maple at your local lumberyard you'll be able to pick out some pinkish boards. Soft maple isn't that soft; it won't dent easily. It sells for $4.50 a board foot in Houston. It sands and works well but I wouldn't try to stain it.
Thanks for the suggestion - I'll have to go see what's around here in Southern California.
Bob,
If you are planning to build the cabinet upgrades youself and you have the equipment to go from rough lumber to finished lumber (a jointer and a planer), you can get rough-sawn dried cherry for a whole lot less than $9.00/bd-ft. Many people operate portable sawmills (I have one) that cut very high quality hardwood lumber. If you go to a site like woodWeb or the Forestry Forum and click on the "Find a Sawyer" link, you can probably locate someone near you that has cherry for sale for half of what you quoted. Just a thought. Good luck.
Edited 12/15/2006 3:19 pm ET by DHAM
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll see what I can find (though cherry isn't native to Southern California - darn!)
Bob
You should be able to find some decent alder though at a reasonable price, leave it like it is without stain (I hate stain) you will have beautiful cabinets.C.
I've often used alder as a cherry substitute. Even before it's stained it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Sorry Scruff,
I basically repeated your post, didn't see it, you got it in minutes ahead !C.
Thanks, I'll see if I can find alder locally.
Bob
Bob, based on my experience, working in a cabinet factory for the last ten years, I wouldn't use alder as a cherry substitute. In my opinion alder is too soft of a wood to make a good cabinet. Alder is also to the brown side of the color spectrum where cherry is more to the red side. If I were going to substitute for cherry, I would use red birch. It is by far the closest to cherry.
Thanks for the info. Since I haven't had any experience with alder, it's nice to hear from someone who has.
Bob
You may find some info and help here: http://www.woodmagazine.com/wood/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/wood/story/data/123.xml&catref=wd22
Thanks for the lead. The previous suggestion of alder looks like a good fit.
Bob
Red Birch. That's what I have for my kitchen cabinets. It is the color, almost exactly, of very young cherry with a bit more grain variation. Rich enough it should not need staining. The other plus is that it doesn't darken like cherry, so it stays light and fresh in color. (It's not a different species from the more common light colored cherry, but is the heart wood.)
He is in California ! How much is he going to pay for red birch if he pays more than 9 bucks for cherry ?C.
Haven't seen red birch locally, but I'll look for it. Thanks for the info.
Bob
Bob ,
You have been given some great advice , I'd like to make a clarification for you . Solid Alder when used with Red Birch veneer is an excellent match of grain and color . Red Birch lumber as a specie like White Oak does not yield totally and truly consistent White colored boards the same may be true for Red Birch boards .
Depending on the size of your kitchen and how many bf of lumber you need the cost to use Cherry may not be much greater then any substitute , since the cost of most quality veneers is quite similar at this time . Red Birch and Cherry may cost close to exactly the same amount .
good luck dusty
Bob,
You might want to Google "Lyptus" which is a sustainably-grown hardwood - a hybrid of a couple of Eucalyptus strains - now grown in South America. There are varying opinions...but it is said to be a good substitute for cherry. It isn't clear whether this means it looks like cherry or just has a lot of the working chracteristcs of cherry.
Unfortunately I have never seen any in the "flesh".
Lataxe.
I'll see if I can find any locally. Always like to see it in the flesh before using any wood. Thanks for the info.
Bob
I expect to have Lytus kitchen cabinets in the house I am about to start building. It is not too different a color than cherry, but otherwise not at all like cherry. It does take dye well, and doesn't blotch with stain either--though the surface is so dense that the pores hold more stain than the surface. I think I can finish Lytus to look almost indetectable from mahogany, but never to be mistaken for cherry.
I've worked some Lyptus in the past and have seen it used in flooring. You are right on the money about it's use as a substitute for mahogany. I think it was breed by Weyerhauser as a passable sub for the depleting sources of mahogany. The quality control needs to be worked out by the mills in South America because one board is as dense as hickory and the next is about like alder. The color is similar to cherry, but the grain pattern is strictly tropical.
Edited 12/17/2006 3:46 pm ET by terrylee86
Bob -
Exactly which part of your cabinets is veneered? Most of the cabinets I see (and build) have a veneered carcass with solid wood faceframes, doors, drawer fronts, etc.
Do you know what you have for the core material of your carcasses? It's probably either particle board or plywood.
Finally, do you have any idea about why your cabs are coming apart near the sinks? That sounds like a moisture problem - possibly due to unfinished bottom edges on your upper cabinets. I've seen similar problems when coffee pots, etc are always used in the same place. The heat & moisture collecting under the upper cabs can wreck them in a hurry.
Refacing cabinets can be a pretty "iffy" proposition. Some refacing jobs can look pretty good, but many are pretty bad. If you're having it done, check their work before you sign the contract.
Also, try to figure out why the old cabs failed. Even the cheapest production cabinets should last more than four years under "normal" conditions.
The cabinet sides are a veneered plywood, and appear fine. The big problem is that some of the rails and stiles are veneered! They're a relatrively simple form (looks like a cove bit used to treat the outside, and a simple rail/stile set for the inside, with a plywood sheet in the center). The problem is that the flat parts of the rails and stiles have a very thin veneer, apparently to give some grain pattern. The wood is supposed to be beech, but I have my doubts on some of it (appears almost grainless - more like sawdust and glue!). The very thin veneer literally disolves when exposed to water for very long - like the doors under the kithcen sink. So the grain pattern fades out. Looks rather ugly. So I'm thinking of replacing the doors (and some trim pieces used to fill in spaces between cabinets).
Bob
Bob Milton
Many local cabinet shops use hardmaple and simply stain it to look like cherry..
as for paying $9.00 a bd.ft for cherry please go to a sawmill that saws a lot of cherry. Wholesale price is around $1.85 for FAS here and that gets you boards as wide as 22 inches on occasion..
Every hand that touches wood from the sawmill on adds dramatically to the cost. there are at least 5 hands from sawmill to lumberyard.. Sometimes a lot more!
Cherry is real easy to air dry, I have never lost a single board doing so and I've left cherry unstickered for well over a month (try that with maple and you'll lose wood within a week)
If you want enough cherry you can order it from my sawmill and they will arrange to ship it to Calfornia, get together with fellow wood workers.. order a semi load and split the costs.. You might check because I remember thant cherry grows natively in Mexico so I'm not sure it doesn't grow in Calfornia.
Edited 12/16/2006 9:13 pm ET by frenchy
My one problem is there aren't many sawmills in Southern California. (One of the reasons things like cherry are so danged expensive here). I'll have to try one of the internet suppliers, or one in the FWW ads.
Bob
BobMilton,
Next time I visit San Diego do you want me to toss some cherry or other wood into the truck?
Frenchy,
Thanks for the offer (though I am in Ventura, not San Diego). But I've got a couple of leads on some alternates that look promising. I have found a local supplier for alder, which is supposed to work well and I have tried poplar with antique cherry dye and that is working much better than I would have expected. In the end, I'll probably go with the alder.
Again, thanks for the offer.
Bob
Frenchy:I would not mind knowing where the sawmill is that sells 20" wide cherry for $1.75/bft.
AlanWS
No secret, Johnson logging in cannon falls Minnesota.
Now don't go down there and expect to sort thru their piles of wood and select the wide ones.. They typically sell wood by the lift, about a 1000 bd.ft. whatever sized tree they have is what they saw..
I get wide boards like that because I have bought nearly 50,000 bd.ft. of wood from them. they are willing to do me an occasional favor. But yes if they have a tree and you buy the whole tree and ask for mill run that's what you get.. wide narrow and everything!
Thanks!
You might consider jatoba. It is sometimes called "Brazilian Cherry". It is not cherry, but the color is similar enough that non-woodworkers might not notice. It is a strong, dense, hardwood. In my local hardwood dealers, it is selling for $4.5 bdft, where cherry is $6.5. Another good thing about it is that unlike today's cherry, the whole board is heartwood, so the effective cost difference is even bigger. Jatoba plywood is available -- about $55 for a 4x8 by 3/4" here.
Thanks for the lead - I'll see if I can find any locally.
Bob
Get some antique cherry dye from Lockwood and try it on poplar.
John
I've got some antique cherry dye from Lee Valley. Wonder if it's similar. I have some poplar scraps - will have to try it and see what happens.
Thanks for the lead.
Bob
Bob,I really do not know. I have been using the analine dyes, in powder form, from Lockwood since about 1980 and I suspect that everybody who is now selling variations of analine dyes are buying them from Lockwood and reselling them because the cost associated with developing analine dyes is probably prohibitive. I started out using Moser's and then they sold out. Then I researched the dyes and discovered that Lockwood has been making them for over 100 years so I didn't look any more. And at that time, if memory serves, Moser used the same (named) descriptions as Lockwood because, I presume, nobody ever heard of Lockwood. Now they all have new names and are confusing, and that's how I got the clue that they were from Lockwood.All you can do is dye some poplar with what you have and see how it looks. I always start with a lesser powder addition, add more if I need more depth, and keep track of the additions so I can reasonably duplicate the formula in the future if I need it.BTW: I have no association with Lockwood and I don't even know the name of the guy who owns Lockwood.JohnThe grain will differ between poplar and cherry but it may not differ depending on the application. As an aside, the house I currently live in has a bathroom suite of poplar dyed to look like a rosewood. A friend who is a very good general contractor came with me to look at this house commented on the nice 'cherry' cabinetry in the bathroom.
Edited 12/18/2006 7:01 pm ET by pins
Thanks for the info. I'm going to try the dye I have on poplar and see how it looks.
Bob
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