Kitchen Renovation: The Cabinets

Welcome back to part 3 of our Kitchen renovation. In this post we will be discussing the cabinet DIY facelift! If you haven't read our first or second blog post you can access them here and here.

With the countertop backsplash and sink done we set our sights on the old cabinets. These were the original, Formica and beige. We knew that replacing cabinets can be expensive and would put this project way out of our budget. So we decided to paint them. The question became, what color do we use?

We pulled these paint samples to test what it would look like. The darkest of course was to represent the countertop, the one under Chelsie's thumb was what we were thinking of for the walls and the middle shade is what we chose for the cabinets. We went with something that was lighter than the countertop to create a contrast and keep the small space looking bigger than it actually is. **Pro tip** if you pick lighter colors it makes the space look larger and more open. Once we selected our colors the work began.

As we stated before we had to sand the doors while we were doing the other sanding of the drywall and countertop. Because, if you remember the house looked like this...

So we removed the doors and drawers, sanded all the surface Formica with... you guessed it! ...220 sand paper! With the doors removed I could take them outside while Chelsie sanded the cabinet boxes inside. We wish we had more pictures for you guys but here is all we have from the process.

Note the HUGE mess on the dining room table! We were living in disarray. But photographed to the right is the stack of doors with the old hinges after I removed the pulls. The old pulls were an antiqued nickel/silver and they were round. Chelsie described them as "dated".

Let the sanding begin....and it felt like it never ended. But in actuality with all the sanding we had to do, we were done in about 3 days. And they were not full days because inevitably I had to go to Home Depot a few times in the morning, so I wasn't really able to get my hands on the project until noon or later. So we can't be too upset about the 3 days.

Photographed to the left is the cabinets without the doors on them and the beige cabinet boxes. What a mess! AmIright?

Once the sanding was done it was time to paint! But before paining the color we had to use a primer called gripper to help the paint stick to our slick surface. (despite all the sanding) Luckily we had some packing paper and old cardboard boxes so we taped that to the floor and laid out the doors. We learned a lesson here, you should prop up the doors so they are not flat on the ground. Why? One may ask. Well, because when you paint the sides it is inevitable to have paint on the door and the layer of paper/cardboard/plastic that you have protecting your floor or surface. So when it dried and we picked it up, the paper/cardboard went with the door. This resulted in us having to sand it back down (GAHHHH more SANDING!) It wasn't that bad, but it was definitely a lesson. **Pro Tip** you can use shims or the mixing sticks (free at home depot) to lay underneath the door to raise if from the ground. This prevents the paper/cardboard from sticking to the door after it dried. I also recommend painting the back of the door first.

With doors and drawers off we also replaced the pulls and hinges. The pulls I picked were square, modern and cool looking. However, I did not realize how hard trying to get these little square pulls level was going to be. (Note to self: round is better). With the hinges I bought the same style and almost did a part for part change. I did have to make some new screw holes, for this I used a small drill bit first to drill holes where the screws were going to go. I found this made them go in easier and exactly where I wanted them.

Thank you for reading! Please share this post and pin to pinterest! Stay tuned for more Kitchen Renovation episodes!