I would love brand new cabinets, but I'm not willing to invest $5k in new cabinets for this house, so a paint and hardware face lift it is! If HGTV, Trading Spaces, and Color Splash all say it's good for my kitchen, it must be true.
I've owned my home for just over two years now. And since day one I've been talking about painting the kitchen cabinets. I even bought the paint. A year ago.
First let me tell you how much I hate my cabinets. The only thing they have going for them are that they're real wood. But they're straight out of the 80s country kitchen scene. They have tacky gold handles, the hinges are some other color that doesn't match, and they're this ugly arched grooved style. I don't know the name, so let's just call it Country Eye Sore. I would love love love to have some square, simple cabinets. Instead, I have these:
I had a false start on motivation about 2 months ago when I took the doors and hardware off the single cabinet in the breakfast nook - it was to be my test run. I got as far as cleaning the doors, then they sat on the nook bench, enjoying the view for the summer.
This week I finally got serious. I did some internet research and looked at what other people had done.
Why research, when I had already bought the paint a year ago? Well, I bought white paint. I still want white cabinets. But my entire kitchen and nook have white tile on the floor. Tile that would take me days to tear out and replace (I removed about 13 squares of it in the entryway when I first moved in and it took 4 hours of backbreaking work. There are over 100 squares in the kitchen).
Current state of my kitchen, August 10, 2011. Envy my white tile floor an peach tile counters/backsplash.
Now I know all white rooms are all the rage for rockstars, Bravo Real Housewives, and people who live in Miami, but I don't think that applies to kitchens in Rolando. So I decided I would paint the lower cabinets a different color but paint the upper ones white as originally planned. After my research, I decided some light gray, green, or taupe color would contrast nicely. Kind of like this:
After reading a helpful how-to blog post on Young House Love, I headed off to Home Depot to purchase a few things:
- Oil-based primer
- Wood filler
- Good rollers
- Paint brush
- Lots of sandpaper
- Cleaning gloves
- Painter's tape
- 8 gazillion paint swatches
Still to purchase:
- Lower cabinet paint
- New hardware (I just heard my wallet gasp...)
- Contact paper for the shelves
Tonight I begin disassembling the kitchen and cleaning years of gunk off the doors.
Read Painting the Kitchen Cabinets Pt. 2: Cabinet Removal
Read Painting the Kitchen Cabinets Pt. 3: Before & After
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