I really think that it is wonderful that you are thinking about this. Yes, both freecycle and craigslist are great answers. Since they are both free to use, use them both. What I did (and I had nothing as major as a kitchen full of cabinets) was to set up a different email account specifically for this purpose and after a few correspondences you can generally get a feel for the people. Honestly, the folks I dealt with her TOTALLY fine and normal, but there is some paranoia in me so I wanted to prevent any craziness. I would make it clear in your posts that they must be able to lift and transport the cabinets. Depending on your circumstance, you coudl have the cabs placed in your garage until pickup- that way you could allow a few days worth of getting them out.
Anyway I do think that is a great idea. It might not get a response immediately because kitchen cabinets are not as readily useful as say a spaghetti pot, but I am certain you will get reponses.
Good luck.

We shared your concern. We hung some old cabinets in our garage, basement storage area. We offered the rest to the trades people working on our house. They welcomed the opportunity to also use them in the garage for storage.

We have put most to use as DH's workspace in the garage, and will eventually get around to taking the others to Habitat for Humanity, which in our area has a store where they resell donated building materials.

If you set them alongside the curb, most likely they'll wander off and find new homes.

Our cabinets are from the 70's too. We are donating ours to Habitat for Humanity... they usually have a retail outlet that sells donated goods to support their efforts. We think it is great because it benefits everyone:
1. Good cabinets go to DIY'er that can make good use out of them.
2. Habitat for Humanity gets the money to use for building houses for deserving people.
3. We get rid of our stuff and they pick it up (and demo it if you prefer).
4. It doesn't end up in the landfill.

We are donating the pine floor, cabinets, dishwasher, Wall oven, gas cooktop, island hood, sink... almost everything. The previous owners put them in and they are all less than 4 y.o. We emailed them and the guys came out to look at them (not very thoroughly... I guess they didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth.) and they are the nicest people. If we give them enough notice, they can get volunteers together and do the demolition "free". They said they rather do the demo since they can take care in doing it so that they can re-use it.

We chose to have our contractors to the demo for scheduling ease. Our contractors said that it they will take the cabinets down as a whole so that it can be preserved... they prefer to do it that way because it is easier.

HTH

Here is a link that might be useful: Habitat for Humanity ReStores

You should definitely plan ahead if you want to salvage your cabinets like this. Ours were in pretty bad condition, so most were not suitable for reuse, but it would have been a much different demo job if the guys were supposed to be saving the cabinets. As it was, they literally ripped them out and they were in useless pieces.

I paid a little extra (maybe $200? I can't remember exactly, but it wasn't much) for them to save some oak floors and pecky cypress paneling, and it took them far more time than had they been able to do the same kind of demo as they did with the cabinets. I will reuse these materials in another project, so it was well worth the added cost.

I guess what I'm saying is talk with your GC about the costs involved with saving the old cabinets or other materials during the demolition. If he will be charging extra, this would be good to know ahead of time. Unless you plan to use them yourself or donate them to something like Habitat for Humanity, you may want to make sure that you recover any added cost from the demolition.

We donated ours to Habitat for Humanity. They sent a truck to pick them up and while here also took our old appliances which they asked if they could have when they saw them sitting with the cabinets. They also took the counters and sink as well as the faucet and old window treatments. I had an itemized list in duplicate, one copy went to them and one was signed for as picked up and used for a tax deduction.

We are using most of ours in the garage (or we're supposed to be). What we don't use, we'll probably take to Habitat.

We put some of our old cabinets in our laundry room. The rest were in pretty bad shape so they went into the dumpster.

My next door neighbor wants a few of our old cabinets, and the telephone installer overheard her talking about them and wants the leftover ones for his lake cabin!

Both people will dimantle and remove their cabinets. We won't have to lift a finger; the cabs will be out of the house and not sitting in the landfill. Everyone gains on this deal.

We also have circa 1970s dark wood cabinets. Our GC will take anything useable to the rebuilding center. DH also wants a few cabinets to go down in the garage.

Unfortunately, our cabinets were custom cabinets built on site, which we think will make getting them out in one piece challenging, particularly the uppers. However, I'm sure that some will still manage to make their way to the garage and some will go to the rebuilding center. Our dishwasher, cooktop, sink, and faucet will also go to the rebuilding center. The oven is original to the house. I'm not sure what will happen to it.

It's great to think about it ahead of time!

There are also benefits for you to donating the cabinets... if you throw them away, they will take up a good part of a dumpster which you will have to pay for.

We sold the entire contents of our kitchen to someone on Craigslist... they got a pretty good deal, but I got everything out of my house with one day's notice and made $1500. I could have made more if I had been willing to sell the fridge to one person, the cabinets to another, etc... but it was easier to just sell it all to one person.

Good for you for donating (I am a stay at home mother with zero income so whenever I can make a little bit of money, I am on top of the world!!).

I donated my cabinets and appliances to Habitat for Humanity. I even gave them my large island with an expensive butcher block top (96" long) and the Elan (Ilse) gas cooktop with one 18,300 BTU burner, one long poaching and frying burner, and 3 other burners.

They were very appreciative and told me I could take 10% write-off of my new kitchen cost (I guess this is IRS rules).

Mainly, I like the idea that someone gets to use perfectly good appliances, sinks, faucets, cabinets, etc., that otherwise couldn't afford them.

Greg

A good friend of ours was building a mother in law appt type thing in the lower level of their house. Instead of having the contractor demo our kitchen, we invited them over with some liquid refreshments and we all went to work taking the kitchen apart and moving it to their house. They used almost all of the kitchen,including the countertops, sink, fridge, etc, and it looks really nice in their place. A couple of the pieces weren't worked into their kitchen, so those were given to another friend who replaced her pieces with them. So all of the old kitchen was reused :)

I feel so green LOL

Our cabinets were in pretty poor shape, most hinges broken not replacable. My friend came by a week before demolition and took off some doors and shelves and used them to build shelving in her garage. But 90% ended up in the dumpster.

The dumpster was a day late in arriving (most everything else was waaaay more than just a day late ....), so this is the heap we had before everything went in there:
{{!gwi}}

They were very appreciative and told me I could take 10% write-off of my new kitchen cost (I guess this is IRS rules).

No, no! God, don't try this, this is not anything the IRS allows. You donate the items, HfH has to tell you how much they got when they resold them, and that's what you are allowed to deduct.

It's a total PITA; you used to be able to value them by looking, on average, at what used cabinetry and appliances were selling for, and then using that as a guide. I guess the IRS got tired of people donating a broken-down car that hadn't run in a year and deducting the bluebook value for a car that was in tip-top shape with a few extra options.

Our HfH guys did not know that they had to report back to us the amount they sold our cabinets for; they looked very surprised when I told them about that regulation (confirmed by my GC). They did not get back to me, either, so we did not include it on our charitable deductions for 2007. But we did the right thing keeping the cabinets out of the landfill and made someone's day a little brighter by providing sound kitchen cabinets that they could afford.

We donated cabinets and other stuff to Habit for Humanity as well as the Rebuilding Center in our city. There were some things that those places wouldn't take. These we left in the driveway (our neighbors must have loved this!) with notes that they were free for the taking. The fridge, which I thought was on it's last legs, was happily taken by a church. Everything is gone now and we are thrilled that everything that could be recycled was. A

Like others, we will be installing most of our old wall cabinets in our garage for storage around DH's work bench. However, I will be salvaging the following:

1) old wooden pullouts to use in the garage base cabinets, after a nice application of WD-40 to ease the 30-year-old squeaky metal slides;

2) metal breadboxes (to store extra dog food in the garage storeroom safe from the little roof rats that sometimes find their way inside the house);

3) shelving material and shelf supports from all of the wall and base cabinets that will be going into the dumpster.

I know that I will want more shelves than come with my new wall cabinets, so I will use the old shelving material to play with different interior layouts until I find the right configurations for my "stuff". Once I'm settled on the perfect shelf arrangements, then I'll order the permanent shelves from the cabinet manufacturer.

I gave mine away on Craig's list, as I did my oven, fridge, stovetop. They were so horrible that I just didn't feel right about giving them to habitat for humanity- I was not sure they's survive even a truckride, and was worried they'd be more burden to a charity than a benefit. But the woman who came to get them was grateful, and I was relieved that they did not go to a landfill.

Hi - we sold ours on Craigslist - there is a ton of demand for inexpensive, used kitchens - for a tiny little kitchen we got over $2,000... really helped towards the new kitchen.

Good luck :)

For our 50+ year old cabinets, it was time to return to the good Earth.

May they rest in peace.

Several of our cabinets we advertised and sold on Craigslist for $35 a piece. The buyer was fixing up a place that they rent out. Some of them we plan to keep in our garage as storage.

Our old fridge we "sold" through free cycle. The stove I gave to my sister. The OTR microwave and ceiling fans I donated to a yardsale to raise money for a friend's dogs vet bills.

We asked about this when we went to demolish the old kitchen. Unfortunately, ours did not come off in one piece. What was left, couldn't have been sold to anyone. Like megaul, ours were ready to return to the Earth.

I wouldn't have sold the range or even freecycled it (I'm assuming that means to give it away to someone who needs it). Two of the four burners didn't work and there had been a fire in the upper oven. It was a 29 year old mess!!!

DonnaR/CA

Thanks everyone. I think I'll go the Craig's List route first, and see how that works out.

Thank you, especially, to the person who suggested setting up a special email account for that. I can use a new account anyway for all the junk email (is it spam if I knowingly give out my email address?) that I sort of bring on myself - "Sign up for our mailing list & get coupons" and all that.
Some times I have so much junk mail that I just don't feel like wading through it, and real email from friends just languishes there unread because I didn't know about it.

I just got my New to me kitchen cabinets free off of Craigslist. the man who listed them is a cabinet maker and to him they just weren't worth putting a price on so he gave them away. He posted his cell phone number, I called within ten mins of the ad going up he had specified all the measurements and pics on Craigslist, he had them as a first come first serve (I was lucky) He told me when I picked them up that he had 20 phone calls after me!!!

Good luck getting yours gone! I'm sure you will make someone VERY happy... I know I am extrememly happy with mine :)

We gave a few to a friend who's in the process of fixing up a duplex for a rental property. We donated the majority to Habitat for Humanity along with two sinks, 3 faucets, all the hardware, our long butcher block counter, all the solid surface counters and all appliances except for our fridge. That we gave to another good friend.