Reclaimed Apple Crates for Kitchen Cabinet

Around April of this year I began a kitchen remodel that still has some finishing touches yet to be done.  I have been wanting to share it but would rather wait until it is completed.  Until then I thought I would share a cabinet that I made for the remodel.

We were given a bunch of old Hospital cabinets from the 70's I am guessing, not sure, and they are pretty nice cabinets.  They are all metal except for the top cabinets which have glass doors which we really like.

As with any old cabinet set we had to make these cabinets work for our kitchen.  We only had 5 base cabinets and 4 upper cabinets.  

They all fit well but there was one area next to the refrigerator that was too large to leave open, and we were out of base cabinets.  I was thinking of buying a wood cabinet and painting it the same color but thought it would look like I was trying to make it match.  So I took a trip to a local antique store.  

There is this guy in Vienna, MO that has almost anything old.  He has about 5 large buildings just jam packed.  I went looking for something that would do the job and came back with three old apple crates.

This is what the cabinet looks like, it still needs the base trim put on.  

There is a small area between the crate cabinet and the metal cabinet for storing cutting boards.

The construction wasn't to difficult.  I made a simple cabinet shell out of 3/4" plywood just large enough for the crates to fit.  

Next I used 16" drawer slides to install the drawers.  These can be purchased at any hardware store and have directions on the back.

One package will include all hardware to install one drawer; two sets of slides and screws.

These are easy to install.  The slide for the cabinet is attached flush on the face of the cabinet (this has trim that was attached afterwards) and flush with the base of the drawer. 

The slide for the drawer is attached flush at the face of the drawer, or right at the back of the drawer front, and about an inch up from the bottom.

The slides have stops built into them so the drawers don't come flying out when little ones like my kids pull on them.

All I had to do to the crates to prep them for being drawers was put a few coats of polyurethane on to protect the paper advertising, put some drawer pulls on, and some trim on the edges.

The drawer pulls were all items I had laying around:

The drawer face trim (some old wood I had):

The finished product, well almost finished.