White Kitchen Cabinet Reveal

 All the insanity is finally over with….for now.  Yes that means that after the cabinets were prepped, painted, and the doors have finished drying they are now all hung up!

Ohh don’t forget the much overlooked pantry side of the kitchen.  It got a nice little makeover too….along with a new appliance Mr. Stainless. 

I find myself standing in my kitchen and basking in the glory of the crisp white-ness that used to be well builders grade orangey.  Remember this?  Well i'm trying to forget!   

Projects along the way that helped bring the kitchen to this point are my wonderful DIY kitchen island and spraying the knobs ORB to update them from bling bling gold.  Oh wait, don’t forget our two new appliance friends our wheeling and dealing double oven stove and our new friend the stainless steel fridge.  Throw in a DIY magnetic chalkboard without magnet paint, a pantry revamp, a bill collecting organization center and that rounds up the DIY projects in the kitchen so far.

Oh wait….did I forget a little project?  Oh yes I did!  We recently made a voyage to Ikea…AKA the best place on earth.  We brought back this amazing cutting board that goes over the sink.  And then we returned it.   

Well the first time wasn’t a charm.  It was too long for the sink, and we decided that we might be able to DIY one.  No luck and we went back to get the cutting board for a second time.  We realized that we could shave a little off the cutting board to make a perfect fit over the sink.  This not only an amazing new addition to the kitchen because I cut a lot of shit…..but it also adds precious counter top real-estate.  If you haven’t noticed I have been trying to maximize my countertop space by adding an island and this was another great way to get that effect in a kitchen with minimal counter space.   Half of my sink just became usable space to chop things OR just set some extra stuff.  BOOM.  It’s totally a bonus that I have loved it ever since it came home to live with us.       

Also maximizing our countertop space is a cover for the stove that usually goes here when I’m not boiling a mean pot of pasta.  Ahhh cooking has become bliss in my new space!        

Now here is the down and dirty.  For the paint, brushes, sanding stuff, and all the other junk we used to paint the kitchen the budget came to around $100.  I am a terrible blogger in that I don’t have it down to the penny.  Maybe it was around $98.37?  Who knows….all I know is that we didn’t crest over the hundred dollar mark for the paint and supplies. The great part is we had most of the extras like some rollers, some drop cloths, the sander, etc.  The biggest part of the budget was paint which was around $30 ish dollars a gallon.  Maybe $34.97…who knows.  All I know is that we are making good headway with the kitchen!!  Future projects will include a subway tile backsplash, new stainless dishwasher, open shelving above the microwave island, new lighting, and some wall art.  Probably some other small stuff along the way too!         

Putting our Life...I Mean Kitchen..Back Together

About a week after we painted the cabinets and while the door faces were drying I felt it was time to put our life….I mean kitchen….back together. 

All the dishes, cookware, microwave island, etc. slowly navigated back to its home.  Having everything back in its rightful place makes the project seem not so bad and almost all complete.  It has been a rough project because we use our kitchen so much, but we have been managing.  Updates of the completed project are coming soon! 

Kitchen Transformation: Painting the Doors White

After and during our cabinet painting we got down to it and started to paint the cabinet doors.  We decided to paint both sides of the cabinets to make the kitchen look more polished.  I know a lot of people decide to leave the insides the original color because “who is going to know”?  Well the answer to that is I will…… and it will bug me.  I started by sanding both sides of each door with the electric sander.  Wear your dust mask because this can be an unpleasant task.  I tried to sand down as much of the wood grain as I could….but since it was so deep some of it still popped through. 

Next we brought all of the doors downstairs where the painting would be happening.  You see we live in Minnesota and it is cold up here.  Although we could get away with sanding in the garage to keep all the dust out of the house, it was too cold to paint in the garage. 

Before we began to paint we rubbed down the doors with de-glosser to make sure the paint would go on without a hitch.

The brushes we used to apply paint were a regular roller, a foam roller, and a small brush.  We used the rollers on all the flat surfaces and edges and used the small brush to touch up the detailed areas.  We first applied the paint with the small brush and regular roller and rolled over it with the foam roller to even the paint out. 

After all that your doors should start looking all nice and white!  We did 6 coats on each door on each side due to our little paint problem.  We started with painting the backs of the doors first so when we flipped them to paint the front side any damage to the paint would not show on the outside.  It is recommended that you wait 5 days before flipping your doors to give the paint time to cure.  Even though the paint is dry to the touch, it takes 12 days to “cure” or fully harden.  Before the 12 days the paint acts just like latex in that if you pull at it, it will peel off like plastic.  This is a good tip to know if you are painting shelves or windowsills (like we were) that you need to keep weight off them for 2 weeks.  We waited 10 days to flip our doors and after we painted the other side we waited 12  to put them up.  We were worried that with all the jostling and what not that goes on when putting the doors up we wanted to be extra safe that nothing smudged or peeled in the re-instillation process.

Since our back room in our basement is a wee bit small it was a challenge to find spots for all the cabinets faces to dry between coats.  We had the most success with laying them on the floor and elevating them with small pieces of wood.  After all the coats were on it was just time to wait it out until everything was dry. 

 

 

Kitchen Transformation: Painting it White

So here is the kitchen before we started our update.  It looked okay, but the orange-ish builder grade cabinets just weren’t my style.  My dream kitchen consists of crisp white cabinets, subway tile, a lower bar between the kitchen and dining room, stainless steel appliances….ahhh the list goes on.  But we had to start somewhere, and that somewhere was with paint!    

The project started by empting out the kitchen piece by piece and cabinet by cabinet.  Luckily we were able to shift most of the stuff over into the dining room.      

I used the kitchen island to create a makeshift cooking station complete with microwave, coffee pot, toaster, and cook top.  I figured with these appliances I could brave it a couple of days without my kitchen.  Some people would be fine without a kitchen for several days…..but not this girl.  I live in my kitchen so while it was under construction it was like missing my right arm.  Some words to the wise…..if you are planning a similar project have some meals planned in advance that you can heat up in the microwave (like soup), put in the croc pot, or fry over a cook top.        

I also made a little makeshift station with dishes, measuring cups, bowls, Tupperware, etc. so I could have easy access to the essentials during the painting bonanza.  This was a lifesaver and stopped me from ripping my hair out from the frustration of not being able to find anything.  These last two pictures are proof of how neurotic I can be at times…….but it leads me to organization and piece of mind so I’m okay with it.         

All of the cabinets slowly emptied out and we were ready to get down to business!          

Well…..all the cabinets except the pantry that I just organized.  That seemed like it would be a bit of a bizznitch to put back together so I elected to tape around it with plastic.  I guess I should explain/defend the dumping of the kitchen contents as opposed to just taping plastic around it.  Dust is small.  It gets everywhere.  It is the honey badger of home reno projects….it doesn’t give a shit if all your dishes are clean….it’s gunna get all up in there and settle all over it.  I thought it would be easier to remove everything and put it back in than spending days or weeks cleaning out all of the dust because I didn’t tape the plastic well enough.               

Here are all the materials you will need: drop cloths, plastic gloves, respirator mask, 120 grit sand paper, sand paper for electric sander, 2 inch brush, small art brush, regular paint roller and fine paint roller (looks like a sponge), frog tape, and semigloss latex paint.  Also in the picture is a product called Floetrol, which is a product that is added to paint to eliminate brush and roller marks.  It was recommended by the lovely people at Home Depot to help make sure paint brush marks didn’t show up on our cabinets.  It also thins the paint out.  If you cabinets have heavy wood grain like ours did I wouldn’t recommend this product.  We didn’t have a problem with the stroke marks showing, however the paint was so thin it would settle into the wood grain so we ended up putting on a lot more coats than we originally should have.                   

First you take all the hinges and doors off.  Remember the part about me being a little…well…neurotic?  Soo I kind of marked all the hinges and doors to make sure they went back in the right place.  It was a good idea in theory but in the chaos of it all we ended up saying “screw it” and just took it as it came.                     

If this is something you can keep organized all the power to you!  After several days of plastic and paint everywhere my spirit was broken and I gave up on the organization part.                       

When all the doors came off the real muscle work started.  I took all the doors down into our basement to get them ready to prep for paint.                         

And then our kitchen looked like this.  I took a moment to enjoy the peace before the chaos started.                           

Next I taped up all the plastic.  I wrapped the stove up like a mummy because dust in the stove crevices = not a good situation.  I taped up the space between the kitchen and the dining room and the walkway to the basement.  Not to mention the counter tops and the entire floor.  Every brush stoke has the potential to drip paint and anything that could be damaged by said paint needs to be wrapped up or have plastic over it.  I taped up the spaces between the kitchen and the other rooms to prevent dust from traveling and setting everywhere.                             

I taped up my spices good and they seemed to survive the dust storm.                               

Then it was time to get serious so I busted out the electric sander.  After this there was no going back!                                

When you are sanding don’t forget to wear your respirator mask.  Inhaling all that dust isn’t pretty.  I also took some sexy pictures of myself in the mask……but they didn’t turn out to be so pretty so I decided to leave them out of the tutorial.                                  

I then sanded and sanded until I couldn’t sand any more.  I am proud to say that I did all the steps in the first part of the kitchen tutorial on my own!  From the taking off the cabinet doors, to the taping and putting up the plastic, and the sanding down the cabinet faces.  Only several minor calls were made to the hubby throughout the day, and if I can manage to get through this without gouging out the cabinets or having a door knock me unconscious when I’m taking it off the hinges, anything is possible!