We re-purposed some of them to the garage and garden shed. Some were destroyed in the demo process.

I sold mine very inexpensively on Craigslist. They went to a carpenter who was donating his services to install a kitchen for a low income mother :) . I removed all the cabinets myself - some boxes could not be rescued.

We had a burst pipe so quite a few were too damaged for reuse. I saved the good ones and used them in my laundry room.

I donated my doors and hardware to Habitat for Humanity. The boxes were built in so they got demo'ed.

We also re-purposed for garage and garden. At 40 years old, they were in pretty good shape, but not good enough to install in another kitchen.

My brother took my 23 year old oak kitchen cabinets, resanded & repolyed them & has a new kitchen he is thrilled with. Otherwise, our kitchen design company would have donated them.

We used some uppers in the adjoining laundry room and some lowers in the garage...with the laminate counter top. Extra storage out there is great. If they're in good shape, donate to habitat for humanity or see what you can get on CL.

Habitat for Humanity. That's if no one speaks up for them first. It seems like someone is always on the lookout for cabinets that have been removed for a garage, basement, organizing and storage other than a kitchen. With a large extended family and many friends, a remodel or reno doesn't go unnoticed for a number of reasons ;)

Habitat for Humanity ReStore picked up

How to donate goods to Habitat for Humanity ReStore

Thanks to everyone for the great ideas (and the HH link, benjesbride!) -- Habitat for Humanity was the first option I thought of. I'll also check to see if the remodeling company we go with has a donation process, too. We have neither attic space, basement nor laundry room where we might repurpose them, and no family nearby.

We would have just let them haul them off to who knows where, but the electrician asked if he could have them, and we were thrilled that they would be re-purposed.

Habitat is picking our cabinets up tomorrow, as well as the appliances we will be replacing. The two sinks are going to a friend.

Ours went to the laundry room, garage, and our neighbor's garage.

I did give a moment's thought to placing a couple in the garage, but DH enjoys quick/easy access to tools, etc. on pegboards and open-shelf benches -- no doors to come between him and progress!

When my GF redid her kitchen, we got her old cabs to make a workshop for DH in our garage. Came out nice.

My neighborhood puts them out for bulk trash pickup.

They never stay there until the trash collection comes - either someone picks them up to salvage the doors for their own house or someone loads them into a ratty pickup and they go off to a new life somewhere.

Mine are in pretty bad shape. We are going to try to use a few in the laundry room but the others we will probably toss. The Habitat for Humanity link is useful; I'll try that before I toss them.

One went for basement laundry. The rest are in the garage, meant for tool storage, whenever we put our reno tools away.

We'll be keeping and reworking our cabinets, but any doors, drawers, hardware that isn't used will go to Habitat for Humanity (ReStore.) In our city they don't have a huge amount of good things coming in, and they can use almost anything except plate glass. So it gets cleaned up, hardware gets bagged and attached, and off it goes.

They've helped us out with odd things (where else can you score a matching bracket for a ceiling fan blade, after somebody snapped one off while dusting?) Saved me replacing the whole ceiling fan, which I appreciate, so they get all our stuff.

There were people advertising on Craig's List that they wanted used cabinets. I had two other offers to take them. I don't think they are worth much. I let my carpenter have them in exchange for doing the tear out. I preferred him to the other offers because he wouldn't destroy the house in the demolition. The salvage cabinets are sitting on my back porch right now. He just bought a new home. He plans to repurpose and install them in his new house.

I'm just glad that someone can use them and that they are not going into my dumpster. Getting money for them was not an issue. I just didn't want them to be wasted.

Homechef59 - That's precisely how I feel: it's just a good feeling to know that someone will be able to put them to good use. Besides, I'm likely one of the last people on the planet who has never used (searched? registered with? accessed?) Craig's List, and it may be more trouble for me than it's worth!

Lazy_gardens - We actually will curbside items we no longer need, and folks have indeed driven by early on garbage collection morning to haul the items away. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work as planned: we set out a perfectly good couch (inherited when friends moved away), thinking someone would surely snatch it up. And if not, we'd simply donate it to the local Goodwill. The sanitation guys beat everyone to the punch, and I bolted out the door and down the driveway just in time to see the couch disappearing into the jaws of the trash truck. It was not a pretty sight. And, yes, what an awful waste.

javiwa, I gave him the Franke sinks, the Kohler faucets, the granite countertops, the hardware, a working Thermador gas cooktop and a working Scotsman ice maker. It was a pretty good deal for him. I got my tear out for free, a nasty, hard and dirty job. He brought his wife by to look at them before we started. She was able to get an idea of what it would look like when he was finished. I was happy to see how thrilled she was over the idea of a new to her kitchen.

Javiwa ... our "bulk trash" is quarterly and has a week (2 weekends and the week in the middle) for setting stuff out before the pickup starts. Smart curb shoppers cruise through early that period and then check back the second weekend to see what else has been hauled out.

Habitat For Humanity picked up.

Found out about HFH on here, and am hoping that works out.

Thanks to all. As I've posted in another thread, DH pulled down all our upper cabinets (just for fun, but I know it saved us $), and they're now neatly stacked in the garage. As careful as DH tried to dismantle each unit intact, it was obvious that, during initial installation 24 years ago, there was no forethought to these needing to be removed in sound (reusable!) units: beautiful hardwood maple doors and frames, but the boxes are pressboard. Some of it did not go quietly. The bottoms should fare better as those boxes were redone in 1/2" plywood all the way around.

With three of the 30"w x 18" high cabinets, I plan to make window seats for my kids rooms. Painting and adding a cushion on top. I'm debating the rest. I don't think they would appeal to people except as garage storage -- they're pretty torn up and were builder's grade 30 years ago. Part of me wants to deconstruct them and use to build my kids a treehouse. But the rest of me knows that is probably a bit too ambitious.

We tried posting our entire kitchen and appliances on craigslist first. Got a few bites but only on the DW - go figure. We wanted to sell as a package deal (at least the appliances). It was a steal!

We ended up donating everything to Habitat for Humanity.

Kimberly: Window seats -- what a terrific idea! When my kids were little, I remember it was very easy (and fun) to think of ways to repurpose just about everything! We turned a box (that the Lane recliner came in) into a playhouse that last the kids years. Covered with leftover wallpaper, it was quite the neighborhood hotspot! Being almost empty nesters, our goal now is to purge. :) To your comment about being overly ambitious, I briefly considered saving the doors (with their very nice hinges) and, at some point, using them as replacements for our bathroom vanities and cupboards upstairs. I just have a feeling the doors will sit in a corner for years, and that it's much better to donate everything to someone who could use them now.

ck: I'm thinking I'd have no better luck on CL, especially if I'm up front and describe them as 24 y/o appliances...ha! We have built-in microwave that is spotless, and on a lark, I tried googling sites such as eBay, just to see what they might be going for. I located an out of date listing from a restaurant supply warehouse/auction site, and the last/highest bid stood at $2.00! The unit pictured, though, looked pretty trashed and disgusting. Why, I'm certain mine would easily pull in $10.00! ;)

Mine were the old school site built kind that don't really have backs, just a minimal frame nailed to the studs. Still, we managed to get most of them out intact enough that I can reinforce them with plywood and use them in the garage. The peninsula, which can't be reused, I'm planning on taking apart and using the wood for a coffee table.

BTW, HfH takes cabinet doors, if that's all you can salvage, and I do see people buying them.

Good advice, fishcow - thanks! The doors are still in really good shape -- it's the finish here and there that the painters tried to "improve", then fix, then re-fix yet again!

It's funny that everyone talks about how much their local HFH will take. I called my local HFH and offered them year old engineered hardwood in perfect condition. Some of it was ruined in a flood but the rest of it was perfect but had to be replaced because the new wood wouldn't match the old wood. They were super snobby about it. Basically, they said it "wasn't good enough for them to use". Weird and frustrating especially since so many of you have had such good luck .

*edited* I only offered the wood that wasn't ruined by water not the stuff that was ruined.

We saved the doors and hardware to reuse but the boxes were built-in and could not be saved.

Lily - Good to know! I just discovered that each HFH ReStore has its own listing of what's accepted (based on perceived local need, I'd suppose). One example:

And even more specifically:

It'd be a good idea to check with one's local HFH in order to plan ahead.

We completely reused ours, in fact we wouldn't have replaced the kitchen at all if we weren't.

We purchased my childhood home from my parents with the intent of building a MIL quarters for them.

In discussing the new MIL quarters with them and what my mother would like, she said what she really wanted was her original kitchen.

We had to buy a new kitchen anyways and we figured we might as well buy the new kitchen for me and move the old kitchen into the MIL quarters for my mom.

In fact, the entire blueprint drawn for the MIL quarters was based on these cabinets fitting.

Not necessarily helpful to others but it worked for us.

In our old house, when we replaced the cabs, we moved the old ones into the garage. We used them to store tools, off season equipment, etc.