When Sergio Carratala and Petz Scholtus purchased their 600 square foot flat in Barcelona, they made a conscious decision to make their apartment their testing lab for practical and affordable sustainable living. The couple restored the woodwork, updated systems to increase energy efficiencies and installed a cork floor. Still, the pièce de résistance is the kitchen furnished with cupboards made from recycled wine crates.
The couple admits that the cabinet construction required some advanced carpentry skills and patience to get the desired design from the overlapping boxes to work. The cabinet doors open on a push system eliminating the need for handles with only the drawers requiring pulls.
What is so great about the cabinets is that the wine crates were their own, each housing memories of gifts, friends and good times. So not only is there value in them as sustainable tools, but also as sentimental objects.
Head over to ReadyMade for instructions on how to make your own wine crate cabinets. Also, be sure to visit Petz and Sergio's blog, R3project, to learn more about how the couple incorporated the 5 Rs of eco design (reuse, reduce, recycle, restore and respect) into all aspects of their apartment.
(Image credits: Sergio Carratala and Petz Scholtus / R3project)
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Love it!!
fwiw: it looks like there could be a fair bit of ikea involved -- judging by the feet and other bits around the kitchen -- and i'm left wondering if these are ikea cabinet frames faced with these box veneers (then you have to ask if shipping materials 1/2 way around the world is sustainable). the white-ish side of the right cabinet is a bit of a tell that the entire carcass is not made of wine boxes and the readymade article was sort of vague on the structural component of the overall project (casings, slides, etc.). aesthetically, a clever approach by an estimation, though.
Yep - Those are IKEA cases with the wine crates used merely as merely decorative fronts for the drawers and doors.
Not cabinets made from wine crates by any means - and the instructions on ReadyMade leave out a number of crucial steps - like drilling the holes for the cup-hinges on the doors and drawer boxes for the drawers.
i want to do this right now!
@redneckmodern:
There's an IKEA just outside Barcelona, so I assume they bought the products there so the shipping wouldn't be as bad as you think.
@UWSretreat... i wasn't referring to shipping from the store to consumer, but from the factory to the store. most ikea products are sourced from asia and cabinet frames (not-so-green particleboard and melamine) are super-heavy. some cabinetry comes from central/eastern europe, but not much. in the grand-green-scheme-of-things, one could have made the boxes from locally-sourced wood... or even better: local, recycled wood.
Hi, Petz here, from the R3project.
Yes, the structure of the kitchen cabinets is from IKEA for 2 reasons: cost availability. Not many kitchen shops let you buy cabinets without the front panels. I have to admit that I don't know how many miles the IKEA materials have clogged up, but I like that everything they sell comes flat-pack, and so reduces the impact on the environment.
We love the wooden work surface that IKEA offers, and the fact that all their wood is certified from sustainably managed forests. The doors are not merely aesthetic, but also functional; we did not cover or throw out original doors.
The IKEA structure makes it really easy to find hinges and attach the doors, since IKEA has that very well worked out and you just have to make the panels according to the size and mechanism of IKEA. Plus it's long-lasting if you do it right!
I would have much preferred to build the whole cupboards from locally salvaged wood but unfortunately that option didn't fit neither budget nor timeframe. To reduce materials though, we opted for metal hanging-systems instead of heavy cupboards for the top part of the kitchen. We also find it more practical but that depends on how you like your kitchen organised.
Please let me know if you have more questions, and thanks for the comments!
Best,
Petz
PS: Check out what other stuff we came up with in the <a href:>R3project</a>