About ten years ago, my husband and I bought a row house in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, near where my brother lives and where our business was based at the time. The building was being used as office space, and we wanted to convert it back into a single-family home using non-toxic and sustainable products, materials, and processes whenever possible. We wrote several posts about the (largely DIY!) renovation process to share both the joys and the challenges of taking a non-toxic approach to home renovation.
This post discusses not only what we chose for our kitchen cabinets in that row house, but also what we've learned since, and what we are currently considering for an upcoming Brooklyn brownstone kitchen reno! (The picture above is a Fadior kitchen; more on them below!)
The Non-Toxic Kitchen Cabinet Conundrum
In Lancaster, the “kitchen” (more like kitchenette) was on the third floor—and we turned that one into a bathroom.
So we started from scratch to build a kitchen on the first floor.
Kitchen cabinets can be a major source of VOCs, thanks to the fact that most of them are made from engineered wood products like plywood, particleboard, and medium density fiberboard (MDF). Each of these materials is made using resins called urea formaldehyde, which is classified as a carcinogen. And the resins in engineered wood products can continue to release VOCs into your home for months or even years after manufacturing in a process called “off-gassing.”
Custom Kitchen Cabinets
So what can you use instead? Well, to get truly non-toxic kitchen cabinets, you’d hire a carpenter and have them custom built of solid wood that was finished with natural oils (like linseed) or beeswax. And ideally the glue used in your cabinetry would be PureBond, as it’s the least toxic.
As you can imagine, those cabinets would be pretty expensive. The other problem you’d encounter is that the kitchen gets hot and has a lot more moisture in the air than other parts of the home. So over time, the wood would warp as a result of prolonged exposure to moisture and heat—this is another reason most companies use engineered wood.
Our Goal for Non-Toxic Kitchen Cabinets
- We wanted the cabinets to have an aesthetic we liked.
- We also wanted our kitchen cabinets to be functional and durable.
- Then, of course, there was the toxicity and sustainability factor.
- Finally, we wanted to keep the cost down—it’s not hard to spend $30K on cabinets, and our budget for this project wasn’t going to allow that.
Here’s what we found:
Crystal Cabinets
If money were no object, I’d have gone with Crystal Cabinets for our new kitchen. Unlike some other brands, the Crystal boxes don’t have added formaldehyde and are GREENGUARD certified. The finishes are also GREENGAURD certified. In addition, Crystal Cabinets are great from an environmental standpoint, because you can get a FSC-certified version. However, these are the top of the line when it comes to non-toxic kitchen cabinets and are priced as such.
If you choose these cabinets, make sure you get one of their wood options, rather than a laminate or veneer. And note that they do use plywood boxes, which it seems all brands do. So you’d have to order custom-made solid wood boxes from a carpenter if you didn’t want any plywood at all in your kitchen cabinets. (Again, because Crystal boxes don’t contain formaldehyde, I wouldn’t worry about this.)
IKEA
On the other end of the cost spectrum are IKEA cabinets. At first, I was dead set against this brand because I know they’re made of particleboard and assumed they were toxic. After several phone calls, I learned that IKEA cabinets are CARB 2 compliant. That means they meet the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) standards for formaldehyde emissions from engineered wood. You may also see CARB 2 compliant products labeled as “California 93120 compliant for formaldehyde” or “California Phase 2 compliant.”
While CARB 2 standards are pretty strict, GREENGUARD-compliant cabinetry (like Crystal) are still better. However, IKEA products aren’t as toxic as many other conventional brands, and all things considered, I felt like they were a reasonable option for this space. I still just didn’t love their look, though, so I thought about using IKEA cabinet boxes and adding higher-end doors (which has become a popular hack).
Semihandmade
I loved the idea of doors with a reclaimed look and we almost went with the ones from Semihandmade, a company devoted to making custom door fronts that fit on affordable IKEA boxes. The reason we ended up not getting these is because the door fronts alone were going to cost almost $10,000. That was without any sort of handles, and we still had to buy the IKEA boxes.
Moreover, using Semihandmade door fronts wouldn’t reduce the toxicity in the kitchen at all. When I first reached out to the company, they said: “While our products exceed the highest state emission standards in the country, we do still use formaldehydes in our MDF substrate as well as some solvent in our finishes. These are industry-standard practices.”
So in the end, Semihandmade doors filled the aesthetic and durability criteria, but not the cost or toxicity criteria.
Final Answer: What Cabinets Did We Choose?
In the end, we went with plain white IKEA slab cabinets. We chose VEDDINGE because they were sealed around the edges. Theoretically, this means whichever toxins are used in the resin that holds together the particleboard’s interior will be trapped inside and release fewer VOCs than cabinets with unfinished edges (like the less expensive HAGGEBY).
All told, the IKEA cabinets and boxes ran us under $4,000.
Cabinet & Drawer Pulls
Now for the hardware. I really hated all of the IKEA options and wanted something more high end to make the cheaper cabinets look better. I thought about leather handles, but my dad pointed out how gross the leather would get in a kitchen. My husband fries food a lot (in avocado oil, ‘natch), so leather pulls would be disgusting and greasy within a week. Also, leather is actually really toxic.
Here are the handles we ended up going with. Gold cabinet hardware was really trendy back then, so our choice is dates the kitchen firmly in 2016.
We were really pleased that the Ikea cabinets had no smell when we took them out of their boxes. But we also took the following steps to reduce any VOCs from off-gassing from these cabinets, as well as other inevitable emissions:
- Placing Moso bags throughout the kitchen and all of Project One-Eleven.
- Airing out the kitchen by opening windows as much as possible.
- Investing in this Austin Air Filter.
Next Up: A Renovation to Our Brooklyn Kitchen
We are renovating our brownstone's kitchen over the coming months, and we've found a new entirely non-toxic cabinet brand that we are really psyched about.
Fadior builds whole-home cabinetry entirely from 304 food-grade stainless steel -- the same grade used for food-contact surfaces! The cabinet bodies are glue-free with zero added formaldehyde: no MDF, particleboard or plywood anywhere in the carcass, so none of the urea- or phenol-formaldehyde binders that make wood-based "non-toxic" cabinets a compromise. The same 304 system extends to wardrobes, vanities and storage, it is fully recyclable, and it carries a 30-year cabinet-body warranty.
Here is just one example of a Fadior kitchen:
When I asked the folks at Fadior what makes their cabinetry special, this is what they said: "Stainless steel is the only common cabinet material that off-gasses nothing by construction -- there is no binder chemistry to break down. For a chemically sensitive household, a 304 carcass removes the substrate question entirely."
I totally agree! I will write more about this as we move forward with the reno.
