Antique Cabinets for Your Kitchen: Hoosier Cabinets

Antique "Hoosier" type cabinets may readily be found in antique stores, furniture stores, and on the internet in all kinds of conditions. Most people dismiss these items as being too large to be a curio and too common to belong in a museum. True these may have been the high tech kitchen devices of our grandparents' day but, if you will, take a second look at these large kitchen cabinets of yesteryear for a moment.

Most Hoosier cabinets have three main "areas," if you will, the top cabinet, the center work counter, and the large, bottom cabinet area. There are some variations to this pattern but this is the general rule.

The top cabinet usually had two or three doors, one of which opened into the bin for the flour sifter which hung down into the work counter below. While they are not as large as a built in cabinet in a house, these two or three cabinet areas tend to have a good deal of room. There is even more if you remove the flour sifter bin.

The center work counter is about waist high and usually has a pull out shelf. Most Hoosiers had a set of doors, either roll down or roll around, enclosing the cabinet area here. These doors made this area the perfect bread box even if quite large. The older models had a zinc work counter while newer ones tended to have a porcelain work surface.

Beneath the work counter was a much larger cabinet space. This usually consisted of one large swing open door offset by three or four pull our drawers, vertically stacked. The swing open door compartment usually is quite spacious and suitable for storing large kitchen implements. On some models there were no drawers, instead there was a smaller swing open door compartment or there simply was one large compartment with two doors split in the middle. This set of compartments was also deeper than the top set of cabinets, in order to give the whole cabinet more stability.

Now that you have given me a moment and the basics of what Hoosier cabinets were like you are probably wondering. "What has this got to do with my kitchen today?" That is easy, a nicely finished, antique Hoosier cabinet makes an excellent kitchen cabinet today. It adds décor and character to your kitchen while greatly enhancing your storage space and even providing you with a bit of extra counter space.

You may either purchase an old dilapidated Hoosier cabinet cheap and refinish it yourself, which will let you exactly match your kitchen, or you may search around, pay a bit more, and buy one already in excellent shape for more money.

While you may remove the flour sifters bin, you may want to leave the flour sifter itself four the "look" of having it hang down in sight. Then again, if you are into home baking you may want to actually use the flour sifter. I know, most flours today come, "pre-sifted" but you might use it for cornmeal, who knows?

The point is, a good looking, well restored Hoosier cabinet will make a fine, practical addition to your kitchen while giving you a bit of class. Think it over and take a look at what is available.