Painting the Kitchen Cabinets

I'm about a year and a half behind on blogging, but I'm going to catch up! I promise to fill you in on all the fun updates and purchases in a series of posts in the coming weeks, but for now, let's focus on the current project: updating the kitchen cabinets.

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

Grand total: $79 (but only $29 b/c I used my birthday gift card from Stephen - thanks, man!)

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

Try and Knock THIS Fence Over, El Nino!

This one is short and sweet.

In January, El Nino knocked over 40 feet of my fence and half of the gate between my driveway and garage.

My beat down fence after the storm.

In February, I got a new, roid raging fence that I DARE El Nino to knock over again!

It's nothing fancy, but instead of wood posts which rot, it has metal posts. Suck it termites and weather!

Metal posts. My new pillars of strength.

I had Carl, the handyman who did all the remodeling on the house next door, build it. I only had to pay for half the cost of the fence because it was on a property line, so the neighbor had to pay for the other half. And I had to pay for all of the new gate. We decided to relocate the gate to the front corner of my breakfast nook which I like because now my windows aren't quite as easy to get to.

My new fence, paid for in full by my awesome insurance company, Liberty Mutual.

Free labor, free furniture, and robots

Cheap Labor Rules
My backyard truly is a sight to behold. It's so beautiful that I want to be able to see it all the time.


Clearly, the only way to accomplish that is to install landscape lighting! That's why you see that person bent over in the back - that's my manscaper, Matt. He installed the lights I bought but was too lazy to do anything with. He did the labor and we called it my Christmas gift (yes, this is another post about something that happened months ago).

Ok, ok. You caught me. My backyard is crap. But it's dark and scary back there at night. THAT'S why I wanted the lights. They light up the walkway and the back perimeter so I can keep my eyes peeled for boogie men.

Manscaper proudly finishes his light installation job (you can see two of them near the tree).

I actually will be getting a proper backyard. I met with my friend Krista (check out Krista Percival Landscape Design) to talk about the plan she drew up for my backyard living space. I'm pretty excited about it! It's going to be for relaxing and entertaining, with a firepit, and a cozy place for my hammock and string lights, and a cool wave pattern in the ground, and plants in bright pots. No grass. Now all I have to do is stay motivated and get the work done....

Living Room Updates
I bought an area rug for the living room after about 6 months of lusting over it. It's just about the sweetest thing you've ever seen. I've gotten a lot of compliments on it. Most of all from Jackson, who loves to use it as a horizontal scratch post. Boo.

Speaking of Boo...check out my Robot Kitten

Here's the view of my rug from above. I took a lot of pictures of it. It was like area rug porn.

I also got a new dining table set. Well, new to me. My buddy Joe and his wife Holly who used to live up here but moved to Costa Rica to run their surf camp were tired of storing stuff, so they gave it to me. For free. I have nice friends!

It looks a lot like the one I already had, but this one actually is adult sized, not dollhouse sized. Plus the leather chairs are really comfy. And just in case I ever actually decide to cook, invite people over, AND make them eat at the table, it has a leaf to make it longer. That's how I know I'm a grown up: my dining table has a leaf.

Guest Bedroom Goodness
Speaking of free, my entire guest bedroom, from the furniture, to the mattress, to the bedding, curtains and accessories was all given to me by friends as well. I must have been really nice in my last life.

This is THE most comfortable bed. I like to take my naps in here (so does Boo). Bedding courtesy of Joe and Holly. Bed and frame courtesy of Erika and Jerry.

Mirror, curtains, and candle holders courtesy of Joe and Holly. Dresser from Erika and Jerry. The stereo is mine. But I didn't even buy that. Christmas gift from my aunt and uncle about 9 years ago.

Another angle. Just trying to sell you on my guest bedroom so you'll come visit. I know when a lot of people say their "guest bedroom", they mean the office with their college futon and all the junk that doesn't fit anywhere else in the house. Not me!

Tile, Chicken Breasts and Candy Hands: Adventures in Bathroom Floor Installation

I knew when I bought my house, I wanted to replace the old linolium floor with a tile floor. Waaaay back in October, I finally did. And by "I", I mean my buddy Max and my money.

My bathroom floor before

Max and I went to Home Depot one evening and got all the materials he'd need:

• 36 sqr feet of 2x2 octogon tile sheets
• hardy board
• tile spacers
• replacement baseboard
• waterproof tile chaulk
  
• tile cement, grout sealer, grout scraper, grout spounge (these I all got from Matt since he had them from his kitchen remodel)

Interlude: Everyone who gave me a Home Depot gift card at my house warming last summer: thank you!! You paid for the materials for this project =)

While Max demoed the existing floor and removed the toilet (ewwww...that alone is worth paying someone to do this for you) I went over to Arizona Tile off Morena Blvd, all by myself like a big girl, to pick out my grout. I ended up going with light sliver. I saw a lot of people use this in the online research I did and it looked nice against white tile.

Here's what the subfloor looked like once Max got all the linolium up. The wood around the toilet hole was rotted so he replaced that with plywood.


Even though I was paying him, I felt guilty that while Max slaved away, I laid on the couch reading for about 5 hours.

Max installing the hardy backer over the freshly laid plywood subfloor.

The floor after day one with the grout applied but not wiped away yet.

It only took two days to install the floor.

My new bathroom floor.

Close up of the tile.

My floor was completed on Halloween. My bandmates and I had a party that night. Here's my costume (which I just noticed, totally matches my bathroom):

Chicken Breasts. I was pretty proud of this - came up with it all on my own.

Max came to the party. Best make shift costume ever.

Alex (Swine Flu), Max (Candy Hands) and Matt (Ugly Face)