Add History to Your New Traditional Kitchen

A Traditional-style Kitchen May Have Lived Forever

Rustic Cabin, Vintage Farmhouse, New England Colonial, Southern Coastal, English Manor, French Provincial, California Mission… In new kitchen-speak, ask for “traditional kitchen in wood,” then ask for help from your local UltraCraft designer. You’ll need to decide stain or paint, light or dark, formal or informal, and the subject of this discussion, “How old do you want your new kitchen to be?”.


Add Your History to Your Traditional Kitchen

To create the look of a few years of day-to-day living or generations of extended-family celebrations, just add a Specialty Finish – packages of hand-applied dents, dings, stress cracks, rub throughs, rasping, worm holes, worn edges, and different glazing techniques – to your traditional kitchen. See the chart below for the gritty details. In practical application, here’s how to choose:


A Few Years of Daily Living

Daily living invites light bumps and bruises to any wood kitchen. If you’d like your brand-spanking new kitchen remodel to feel at home in your not-fully-remodeled house, consider the mildest level of distressing: Aged. If you are raising a family of young children, step up to Worn (for stain) or Rubbed (for paint). If you’re raising teenagers, look at Heritage, a double-hit combo of Aged and Rubbed.

Distressing Traditional Kitchen

A Few Hundred Years of Daily Living

If you’re designing your kitchen for a traditional century home or a utilitarian farmhouse or cabin, add a few more years of love. Vintage says, “My kitchen has been feeding families for generations.” Or “I found this workbench in the back of the antique barn and cleaned it up to use as an island.” Vintage is aggressive in an “old world charm” kind of way.

Distressing and Aging Technique for a Traditional Kitchen

Glazes

Glazes add context and texture rather than years. Flood Glaze collects in the nooks, crannies, and crevices of the door’s ornamentation, emphasizing the details. Choose a contrasting glaze for a more formal look, lower contrast for more casual. Linen Glaze is brushed on but not wiped away. The brush strokes are left to mimic the texture of linen fabric. Adding a Linen Glaze to a painted door softens the color and feels like bedsheets just off the clothesline.

Glazing Technique for a Traditional Kitchen

Oh, The Stories This Traditional Kitchen Could Tell

From now on, when you entertain in your traditional kitchen, you’ll need to have a few stories ready to share. How’d that scrape get there? Is this original to the house? Start writing your past. You don’t have to tell them your new, state-of-the-art kitchen has top-of-the-line cabinetry durable enough to live out its own history.     

Download our free Specialty Finishes brochure!


What are you waiting for? Visit your local UltraCraft designer’s showroom today!


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ultracurrent : an energetic flow of premium design ideas.

Here we’ll explore current design trends and ideas, look at UltraCraft products in ways they’ve not been presented before, and celebrate spaces created by UltraCraft kitchen and bath designers. We’ll build a reference library of ideas and information to inspire homeowners and professional designers to think outside the cabinet.

We’ll also introduce new products at least twice each year. We’re committed to living on the leading edge of fashion and function, and offering uncompromising quality, fit, and finish. Our in-house designers, engineers, and new-product developers are always searching for and creating better ways to bring you your dream kitchen…or even better than you can dream!

Hey UltraCraft kitchen designers…

Do you have professional-level photography of your outstanding kitchen designs? You can upload them to MasterBrand’s Media Hub and get them the recognition they deserve! Having your images on our Media Hub allows other designers to be inspired by your projects and your photos have the potential of being highlighted in our literature and on our website and social media posts. Other dealers (only those NOT located in your state) would be allowed to use your photos as long as they credit you and your photographer every time they use your image. Please share your pictures. We love your work!