Rouge Woods, Richmond Hill

Not one cabinet box left this kitchen.

• MDF shaker doors
• New soft-close hinges
• Quartz counters and backsplash

1. 

   01

   This is the part that stays. The box is white melamine, square and sound, and there is nothing wrong with it. What had aged was the oak front, the knob and the worktop it sat under — the parts you touch.

2. 

   02

   Mid-brown oak, speckled granite, a dark tiled backsplash. A kitchen that was built well and then simply became the decade it was built in.

3. 

   03

   The same room from the same corner. Same layout, same floor, same columns — nothing structural moved and nothing went to a skip. Every door and drawer front is new, and every carcass behind them is the one that was already there.

4. 

   04

   Because nothing had to match anything being kept, the doors are MDF — which is what we recommend when a kitchen is being chosen fresh, since it does not move with the seasons the way timber does.