I’m not really sure if this is the correct term. I am building new cabinets and I want to incorporate some small bins to hold items like rice, beans, pasta, etc. They usually have a small window in front to display the contents. I have seen these in old country stores and some feedstores to show various types of plant seeds and the like. Since I will be building these from scratch, I’m scratching my head for design ideas or at least some pictures to look at. Anyone have any ideas or comments? Thanks in advance!
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I used to cruise eBay looking for ideas for woodworking projects. (Haven't hung out there much since I ran out of money.) Seed cabinets and apothecary cabinets were among my favorites. In my experience, seed cabinets have fewer and larger drawers, apothecary cabinets have more and smaller drawers. eBay might still be a good place to look for examples, although I've found it unusably slow recently.
My advice is to keep it as simple as possible. No face frames, no overlay drawer fronts, no moldings, etc. Just a plain box with horizontal and vertical drawer dividers. I would use plywood for the carcase and the dividers, edge banded with some attractive solid wood, unless you use baltic birch ply and leave the edges natural. Dado the horizontal dividers into the carcase sides. Dado the vertical dividers into the horizontal dividers and the carcase top and bottom. I would make the drawers with box joints and plywood bottoms set in grooves.
Experiment with the foods you'd like to store in the cabinet. You might not want all the drawers the same size. Maybe larger for flour and pasta, smaller for beans, smaller yet for sugar, etc.
I'd put a clear finish on it, but paint would also be authentic. You could even go whole hog and make it look like it's a hundred years old and has been painted five different colors over the years.
Very plain sheet steel or brass pulls, I would think.
Edited 8/18/2004 6:25 am ET by Uncle Dunc
Hey Uncle Dunc thanks for the tips. Boy I really butchered the spelling on apothecary though. I guess that the seed cabinet look is more of what I had in mind. We probably won't actually store food in the drawers but will just build some type of false front in the drawer face for display. I just finished an 8x10 walk in pantry that has way more food storage than we will ever need. To keep the country look I built a screen door with two way hinges to separate the kitchen / pantry closet and installed a nice shiny marine bronze screen in the door frame. Looks real nice and functional also. With this cabinet idea, we are trying to get a somewhat country store theme going for the kitchen. Minus the real country store clutter that I remember. :)