It is one thing to design your own kitchen, and quite another to reuse vintage tea crates dating back decades in the process - though the surrounding kitchen wall design, wood flooring and tile backsplash of this radical remodel have some catching up to do. Still, it is tough to compete with the cabinet fronts featured in these photos - a curious mix of conventional modernist simplicity and cleverly eclectic materiality.
The hardware - consisting mainly of beautiful antique metal hinges and highly decorative handles - is also intended to match the age of the cabinet surfaces. A true salvage-hunter's delight, crates of this kind are not cheap but also not terribly expensive. There are entire warehouses full of these as shown in the picture above. No one ever anticipated them becoming valuable some day to folks who have a taste for retro and vintage interior remodeling materials. Their use in this novel way creates a strange balance between a heavily industrial look and a delicate antique aesthetic.
