Oak is back in Atlanta kitchens, and this time it is white oak: a quieter grain and a cooler base than the red oak of the 1990s, which is why it takes a stain without turning orange. We hold it on one door in four finishes, from a painted ivory to a black, and the door is identical in all four. That makes the choice simpler than it looks: you are choosing a colour, not a cabinet.
Ivory Oak, Canyon Oak, Bourbon Oak and Obsidian Oak share everything except the finish. Each carries 327 cabinet sizes, 120 of them wall cabinets and 89 base cabinets, so 1,308 sizes across the four, and a layout drawn in one finish can be ordered in any of the others without changing a single cabinet.
The range goes further than the basic boxes: roll-out shelf bases, bases with trash-can and spice pull-outs, a lazy susan corner with trays, oven and microwave cabinets, and glass-door stacker cabinets that sit on top of the wall run to take it to the ceiling.
All four sit in the Escada collection next to the high-gloss Escada finishes, but they are a different door from the rest of it: a framed cabinet with a five-piece oak front rather than a flat slab.
The frame of each door is four pieces of white oak joined at 45 degrees at the corners, like a picture frame, rather than with the rails butted square against the stiles as on a Shaker door. The practical effect is that the grain turns the corner with the frame instead of stopping at a seam, so the frame reads as one continuous border of oak around the centre panel.
The centre panel is wood-veneered HDF: an oak veneer over a dense, flat core. A veneered panel stays flat where a solid one would move with the seasons, which matters in a Georgia kitchen that swings between summer humidity and dry winter heat.
Ivory Oak is the only painted one of the four. The paint is laid over the oak rather than over a smooth board, so the open grain still shows through it as texture. It behaves like an off-white in the room and like wood under the hand, which is the reason to choose it over a flat white.
Canyon Oak is a light golden stain. It is the closest of the four to what most people mean by white oak right now: pale, warm and clearly timber.
Bourbon Oak is a warm mid-brown, the traditional wood kitchen moved onto a cleaner door. It carries a room on its own and sits well under a pale counter.
Obsidian Oak is a black stain. Across a room it reads as black; up close the grain is still there, which gives it a depth a flat black paint does not have. It is the oak to use where you want the weight of a dark kitchen without losing the material.
Start with the floor. A stained oak cabinet beside a wood floor is a wood-on-wood decision, and the rule in wood kitchen cabinets holds here too: two tones that are clearly different read as a decision, while two that are nearly the same read as a failed match. A pale floor suits Bourbon or Obsidian; a mid-brown floor suits Ivory or Canyon.
Then the light. Canyon and Ivory keep a room bright. Bourbon and Obsidian absorb light and want a room with real daylight, or a pale counter and backsplash to stop them reading as one mass.
Then the island. Because all four share one door, they pair with each other cleanly: an Obsidian island under an Ivory perimeter, or Canyon around a Bourbon island, keeps the profile identical and changes only the tone. That is the safest kind of two-tone pairing there is.
All four are framed cabinets: a 1-1/2" by 3/4" face frame on a 1/2" plywood box, with doors and drawer fronts at full overlay. The inside of the box is natural birch under a UV coat. Doors hang on concealed six-way adjustable soft-close hinges and drawers run on undermount full-extension soft-close glides. The three stains are PPG stains; Ivory Oak is an AC paint finish.
They ship ready to assemble, put together on site with glue and staples or with metal clips. What a plywood box and an RTA carton mean in practice is set out in RTA kitchen cabinets explained.
Bourbon Shaker comes from the same maker on a different door: five-piece birch in the square-cornered Shaker profile, in a warm brown stain. If you like a warm brown but want the plainer Shaker frame, that is the one to look at; it sits in the Shaker collection.
Wood finishes are the ones a photograph is least able to settle, because grain and stain both shift with the light. All four are held at the Norcross warehouse at 6115 Jimmy Carter Blvd, Suite E; bring a piece of your floor and look at the doors beside it in daylight. Collect the order the same day or have it delivered in 7 to 10 business days across metro Atlanta, and if you want the layout drawn first, design consultation is free.
The frame is: five pieces of white oak, mitred at the corners. The centre panel is wood-veneered HDF, an oak veneer over a flat core, which keeps the panel from moving with humidity.
Yes. Ivory, Canyon, Bourbon and Obsidian Oak share the door, the box and the 327 sizes; only the finish changes, so a layout can switch finishes without being redrawn.
Ivory Oak, with an AC paint finish over the oak so the grain still shows as texture. Canyon, Bourbon and Obsidian Oak are PPG stains.
Yes. Doors hang on concealed six-way adjustable soft-close hinges, and drawers run on undermount full-extension soft-close glides.
Every collection below is stocked at our Norcross, GA warehouse for pickup or delivery across metro Atlanta.
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