Galaxy Pistachio Green Cabinet Skin Cabinets

Every wall height costs the same, so there is nothing to save by guessing low and a strip of bare box at eye level if you do. Order skins by the code of the cabinet they cover and which side of it, not by measurement; the skin and gable guide explains why the shape matters as much as the size.

A side needs a skin when someone can see it: from the kitchen, from a doorway, from a seat in the next room. Sides that butt against a wall, an appliance or another cabinet do not. Walk the layouts with that one test and the counts fall out.

Islands and peninsulas are deliberately missing from that table. An island is made of bases standing on their own, so every side of it is seen, and the ends and the back are faces rather than edges. They get framed end panels or cut sheet material, not thin skins, and the decorative end panel page and refacing panel page deal with them. A peninsula’s end is the same, and its back usually faces a dining area, which is a job for a sheet.

• The uppers either side of a window. A run of wall cabinets stops at the window frame on both sides, and both of those ends are seen whenever you stand at the sink. Two wall skins, and the most commonly missed pair on any order.
• The microwave cabinet. A cabinet over the range that is narrower than the ones either side of it, or stepped up for a hood, leaves its own sides exposed. GPG SK MC at $50.05 is sized for it.
• The wall cabinet with drawers. A deep wall-with-drawers unit stands out from a run of standard uppers, so its side shows even when it is in the middle of a run. GPG SK WD at $169.00 is the part, not a standard wall skin.
• The side visible from another room. Stand in the hall, the dining room and the living room with the plan in hand. A base end that looks tucked away in the kitchen can be the first thing you see from the front door.
• A shallow tall cabinet. A 12-inch-deep tower, a broom or utility cabinet, needs GPG SK T12D at $126.75, not the full-depth tall skin.

The counts above assume a plain run of uppers from wall to wall. Real kitchens break that run, and every break exposes sides that were not there on the first drawing. Three changes account for most of them.

A chimney hood between two uppers. When the range wall has a hood rather than a microwave cabinet, the uppers stop either side of it and their inner sides face the hood. Whether those sides show depends on the hood’s depth and width: a hood narrower than the gap, or shallower than the cabinets, leaves a visible strip of side at eye level. That is two wall skins, $50.05 each, and they are worth adding to the order even if you hope the hood will cover them, because the hood is usually chosen after the cabinets.

Open shelving in place of uppers. Swapping two wall cabinets for floating shelves is one of the most popular changes to a green kitchen, because wood shelves against a sage wall look good. It also exposes the sides of the uppers either side of the shelving zone, at exactly the height people look at the shelves. Two more wall skins.

Staggered heights. Uppers at 42 inches either side of a 36-inch cabinet over the sink leave six inches of the taller boxes’ sides exposed above the shorter one. That strip is seen from across the room. It takes a skin matched to the taller cabinet’s height, which on this list costs the same whatever the height, so there is no saving in ordering short. How upper heights are chosen in the first place is covered in the wall and tall sizing guide.

Each of these is a good design decision. Each also adds one or two lines to the skin order, and those lines are the ones found missing on install day. If your plan changed after the first quote, recount.

A skin takes the finish of the cabinet it covers. With green lowers and light uppers, the base skins come from this collection and the wall skins come from the upper finish’s collection, whether that is Frost, Linen or Dove. The Galaxy codes are the same across finishes, so SK W36 in the light finish is the same part in a different paint. Put both on one order.

There is one side where colour changes the decision, and it is the tall one. A green pantry at the end of a light-coloured run shows its full height of side to the room. A skin there is 96 inches of flat sage with no frame in it, at eye level, and in a two-tone kitchen it is the only tall plane of green in view. If that side faces a walkway or the dining area, it has earned a framed treatment instead: the base end panel only covers base height, so a tall face means cut sheet material. Where it faces a wall a foot away, the skin at $169.00 is fine.

The green kitchen cabinets guide covers which parts of a room carry green best, which is where these decisions start.

Skins are glued and pinned to the finished box, and they go on before toe kicks and trim so the kick can butt into the skin rather than the other way round. At the floor, a GPG TKC toe kick cap at $7.80 closes the end; the kicks themselves are on the toe kick page. Where the skinned end meets an uneven wall, scribe molding or a filler takes the irregularity, never the skin itself.

Count your sides with the table and the list above, then send the plan for a free 3D design: the designer marks every exposed side on the drawing, which is the easiest way to catch the ones you missed. Skins ship with the Galaxy order, pre-assembled, in seven days to three weeks. They are here, with the rest of the trim on the decorative accessories page. Contractors ordering several kitchens can get 20 to 40 percent off through Captivating Pro.