Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Biggest Project Ever: Kitchen Makeover!

Well, we FINALLY did it. 

We painted our kitchen cabinets white!
This is the biggest project we've tackled yet and now I kind of feel like we can do anything. 

And let me just say I think I deserve some kind of an award for doing this all while 7 months pregnant.  I mean, how ridiculous is that?!  I probably have a screw loose or something.

Kyle also deserves an award for putting up with a crazy wife during this project.  I may or may not have become a bossy control freak maniac during some of the process.  {sorry, babe}  And he also made dinner each of the 4 nights our kitchen was torn apart.  And did all the dirty work (like scrubbing out the under sink cabinet that had suffered major leakage and molded and the previous owners covered it up). 

So just in case you are also 7 months pregnant (or not) and would like to transform your cabinets from 1998 oak and faux-oak to white and fabulous, here's the process we used:


1.  Clean and clean and clean and clean.... After we Kyle emptied the contents of our cabinets, we scrubbed and scrubbed every inch of the cabinetry with hot soapy water (and a toothbrush for the especially bad places).  And then removed the doors and drawers.

2.  Sand and sand some more.  We used a sander for the doors and drawers and sanded all of the cabinet bases by hand.  After a good roughing up, we wiped everything down with a damp cloth.

3.  Prime.  We used Zinsser primer because I use it on everything and so far I have loved every minute of it.  This stuff sticks to anything.   I primed the cabinet bases while Kyle primed the doors and drawers in the garage. 

It was about this point that I began cursing myself for wanting to paint the inside of all the cabinets. 
(We made sure we had plenty of ventilation inside: lots of open windows and fans)

4.  Finish coat.  The primer didn't take long to dry, so we were able to move to the finish coat pretty fast.  We applied 2 coats of high gloss Behr awesomeness in Bleached Linen.  I'm really happy we went with the high gloss.  Our kitchen is small and doesn't allow for a lot of natural light, so the added gloss helps to brighten things up.  On top of that, the finish already feels very durable and will hopefully withstand a few years of regular wear and tear.


Again, I did the cabinet bases.


And Kyle did the drawers and doors!


5.  Hardware.  We hadn't really discussed adding knobs to the cabinet doors and drawers until 7 PM Saturday night and we were almost finished with the all the painting.  So we ran to IKEA, dressed in our finest of painting clothes and grabbed some black knobs.  And then things got tricky.  We quickly learned that the screw heads were not strong enough for the power drill and pretty much melted in no time.  Without going into too much detail, let me just say that we broke a drawer in the process.  So we opted for no knobs on the drawers.  And are now one drawer short...

6.  Done!  Kyle hung the doors Sunday night and Monday I re-loaded all the cabinets and drawers (minus one) and cleaned every inch of the kitchen until it shone. 


I love it SO much I can't stop staring.  It's seriously like having a brand new kitchen.
I have plans to add a beadboard backsplash, remove the blinds and add a little cafe curtain for the window. 


A side-by-side of the before and after.
(For some reason we took the after without the lights on so it's a little dark.  Whatever)

I'M IN LOVE!

8 comments:

Jenna + Connor said...

That is so cute! I'm really impressed! It's amazing what a difference paint can make.

Kellie said...

What the WOW!!! GREAT JOB! A backsplash will look SO great in there. Have you ever seen curtain clips? I love those. I saw someone do curtain clips with some CUTE napkins as curtains. Just a thought.

Megan B said...

Woohoo! Looks awesome. Very you.

Also, can I just say that in the picture of you sitting down painting cabinet bases, in your finest of painting clothes, you still manage to look really really beautiful? It is very exciting to me to see you in this stage of your life :)

vickyj said...

It looks GREAT! Good job you two! And YES, Kyle does deserve a special award for doing under the sink. I can't wait to see it in real time.

Unknown said...

Wow! Huge difference! I feel ya - painting our old wooden cabinets was a pain in the butt, too, but the results are totally worth it! Your kitchen looks gorgeous!

~Chelsea

melanieadams02 said...

Love it! White is the new color for Kitchens. Good job K&K
Love M&M :)

Jason and Abby said...

you did a fantastic job! We love them!

Rich and Brianne said...

LOVE. Seriously, I adore white cabinets. And your whole kitchen just "feels" so right. Way to go!