Metabox: The no-drawer drawer

Another product that gives a custom result at less cost is the Metabox Drawer System, made by Blum, one of the largest German manufacturers of cabinet gear.

Usually when you make a drawer, you build a wooden box, the drawer box, often with dovetail corners. Then you finish it. Then you mount costly hardware on it, and attach a finish front on it in the wood of choice. Very nice, classic, elegant. But there are so many steps in the manufacturing process; its intrinsically expensive.

The usual kitchen design solution to this conundrum is to minimize the number of drawers, and put in a lot of door-front cabinets. The problem with this is, door cabinets hold about half what a bank of drawers can, and what's in there is tough to extract.

With Metabox, the hardware is the drawer sides and the drawer structure. You don't build a box at all. You mount half the hardware on the cabinet, the other half to a 3/4” plywood drawer bottom (which you have already varnished), then the drawer is literally ready to hang in the cabinet. Then you attach the drawer back, and the finish drawer front, with cute little adjustable clips.

If you built a metabox drawer, with a plywood or maybe Valchromat front, you would have a full extension drawer with all the practical virtues of a conventional drawer, but at a much lower cost.

Wire Baskets and Drawers

One of the key ideas of good kitchen design, going back to the early days of kitchen research can be summed up in one word: drawers.

Drawer cabinets in base cabinets hold much more than door cabinets, and it's much easier to find and retrieve what you need without strain. But drawer cabinets do cost more than door cabinets to buy or build.

We use a lot of wire baskets. The picture shows a stack of Elfa baskets installed in a run of cabinets. We get them from The Container Store, which has a great online utility for pickout out what you need (Elfa Drawer Planner). The frames come in various heights and widths, and have a slide on a four inch interval. You can then insert 4”, 8”, or 12” baskets as needed. It takes just a minute or two to put the whole thing together.

What you get is a set of interesting drawers for about $150. They can be used to store most anything, but we use them a lot for produce that can benefit from a little air flow.

Valchromat, what is that?

Ann Smith's Valchromat sink counter

Most of our projects have undermount sinks. They look great in an old timey way, and function much better than the usual “drop-in” sinks that have that ledge around the edge. It's much easier to cleanup around the sink, you can just sweep stuff from the counter into the sink. It also works much better for draining dishes, you don't get those puddles on the counter. Not to mention how nice the undermount style looks.

We usually use stone for these counters, but are always looking for less costly alternatives. Not everybody can afford slate, soapstone, or granite.

What's the alternative? An undermount sink in a wood counter is asking for trouble. Tile eventually fails. Laminates don't work because the edge of the plywood is exposed.

One of our clients, Ann Smith, asked us to do her sink counter with Valchromat. Valchro what?

We had never heard of it. It turns out to be a European, fairly green, “medium density fibreboard”. Though it can swell, it doesn't break down when wet. It comes in a lot of wonderful colors, and the colors go all the way through. It comes in 49 X 98 sheets, 3/4” thick (slate colored one 1” thickness). It costs about $200 per sheet For a waterproof counter, that is very inexpensive.

Valchromat is incredibly easy to sand, saw, or route using ordinary woodworking tools. At Ann's, we made a plywood template for the sink cutout, followed it with a ordinary router bit, and sanded it. This stuff is flat, stable, doesn't chip out, really nice to work with.

I love the colors. We've put every sort of finish on it, including oil based poly and various oil finishes. With certain oil finishes, or an “oil wax” it looks very beautiful, sort of leathery. It's not impervious like stainless steel or maybe granite. Like wood or soapstone, it does best if given a new coat of oil when it looks dried out or uneven. This is a “patina material” not a “stays new looking forever” material. Ian is still experimenting with different finishes to find the best choices.

It's a revelation making a set of drawer fronts, or a cabinet door, out of Valchromat. If we're making, say, a bank of ash or pine drawers, we have to get the wood, plane it, glue up a panel, cut out the drawer fronts, then sand and finish. Fun, but a major task. With Valchromat, you cut out a piece the size of the cabinet front, slice it up as needed, and that's it. Ready to finish and install.

This new material brings us a little closer to an important goal: finding a way to build a custom kitchen that is not too expensive, but has the same attention to detail and functionality that we can get with more traditional materials.

There are at least two other products that we particularly like for similar reasons. I'll do separate posts on those.

Often it's not cabinetry that runs up the cost, but other factors. I'll do a post on “cost drivers” soon.