
There are many ideas to choose from when it comes to cupboard doors. One of the most attractive is to replace the centre panel of each door with chicken-wire and hardboard, as shown in this project. An undistinguished cupboard is instantly smartened up, and if the panels are already in poor condition, this may be a cheaper solution than replacing the doors.
Many smaller side cupboards, known as chiffoniers, were constructed along these lines in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Instead of chicken wire, they had brass grilles for panels, and these were sometimes backed with silk gathered into pleats. Glass was expensive in the eighteenth century, so insetting the doors with grilles was probably an economy measure. Chiffonier fronts are now more commonly found covering boxed-in radiators – one way of disguising a very necessary twentieth-century innovation. You may, of course, use brass wire for door panels, but chicken-wire looks just as smart. You can either leave the wire absolutely plain or paint it using an oil-based paint (prime it with a metal primer first). Choose whether or not to add the hardboard backing – some clothes cupboards in English country houses used chicken-wire alone, and to great effect. A gathered fabric backing looks stylish: simply gather and pin the fabric to the back of the door, or sew a narrow casing at top and bottom and thread plastic-covered spring wire through, neatly gathering the fabric as you work along. Hook the ends of each spring wire to rings fixed inside either side of the door panel.
Fabric can be used in this way to back functional glass-fronted cupboards. If you add hardboard backing, you can paint the panels a plain colour or apply a special paint effect such as dragging or sponging. Alternatively, stick on a decorative paper – wrapping paper is ideal as it is cheap, and comes in a wide range of designs, as does wallpaper. Trompe-l’oeil papers are very effective, particularly those with false books or crockery on them.




