Remember when our kitchen was a light peach color? Not just any peach color…A color that clashed badly with our nice, warm tan walls and white appliances. Well that is NO MORE!!!

Behold our new kitchen…

Warm, rich brown paint now coats the kitchen cabinets in a swanky semi-gloss finish. Brand new brushed nickel hardware in a modern style bring boring doors and drawers into the 21st century.

And our to-do list? CONQUERED!! Ahead of schedule to boot.

But let’s go back to Sunday afternoon…We had finished both topcoats on the kitchen cabinet doors and were able to wash that roller and brush for the very last time for this project.

The last step? New hardware.

Enter my dad. He is a professional wood craftsman so I knew I was going to beg him for a little help and expertise. As always, he came through like the hero he is and he and John knocked out the hardware install in no more than an hour. For 19 doors and 6 drawers, that is no small feat!

The process is a bit beyond me since I had little to do with it (mom and I sat in the living room and played with Rocky while the boys worked in the kitchen). But I did help with set up. Fist, I dumped out the bag of metal hardware that had been sitting in our pantry since April waiting for this moment. After spreading everything out on the counters for easy grabbing, we were ready for drilling.

Dad made this handy template from scrap wood to help with the measuring.

Since we already had one vacant hole to begin with where the original single “arm” hardware used to be, Dad was able to slip a screw through one hole in his template and then slip the end of said screw through the hole in the door. Then lining up the edge of the wooden template with the edge of the door, he drilled through the second hole in the template and then kept going, drilling through the door.

Here are the doors before drilling with the one hole exposed:

And here they are after drilling – It was just a matter of screwing the metal pulls into the door from the back and then it was all done.

If you haven’t already noticed, we had to do some quick problem solving when it came to the drawers…

As you can see in the photo above the drawer pulls are centered horizontally, but not vertically. The reason was the set up of the drawer construction. You can see below how the drawer front is attached to a box to create the front section of the drawer. If we were to center the pulls both horizontally and vertically, the thickness of the wood to drill through would have been too long for the hardware’s screws. So we simply moved the pull up until we would only be drilling through the thin drawer front.

See how it is twice as thick when you factor in the drawer box with the drawer front when looking at it from above?

But honestly, I sort of like the unique look of the high drawer pull placement! It is consistent with the cabinet door pulls being pushed to the edge, and it just looks a little more modern. Oh and remember the poll I put up a few months ago about going “all horizontal” or “both horizontal and vertical” with the hardware? Simplicity won the competition and we went with “both horizontal and vertical” so that we wouldn’t have to redrill all new holes in the doors. Good thing, because that was the dominant opinion of our readers too – By almost 83%!

Now for more “After” photos…

Did you happen to notice our new kitchen window “curtains”?

I hate to sew (don’t have a machine to call my own anyway), so I was hoping to find some kind of no-sew solution. John and I went to Target over the weekend to pick up a few things and, after finding nothing worth buying in the premade curtain aisle, it suddenly hit me that a pretty kitchen towel could be just the ticket. I needed something about 18 inches long and these two 16-inch clearance towels coupled with once inch curtain rings were my perfect alternative to sewing or hemming something up.

Bonus: They are super durable and easily-washable – What could possibly be better to hang in a kitchen window above a sink than a pair of towels? I’m in love. Now to keep John from using them as actual hand towels after washing the dishes…

This project has been a doozy to say the least. But we are both so in love with the finished product that I think we’d consider doing it again if our next home calls for it. Since we grossly overbought when it came to paint, we’ll certainly have enough to paint another kitchen on down the line.

Speaking of buying…Here’s a quick breakdown of the cost for our kitchen cabinet overhaul:

• 30 contemporary brushed nickel drawer/door pulls: $45.99
• 4 packages of tack cloths (2 pack each): $1.99 each
• 3 mini plastic paint roller trays: $2.82 each
• 1 mini paint roller handle + 1 4-inch roller: $4.73
• 1 4-inch paint roller refill (2 pack): $4.45
• 2 1-gallon cans of Kilz2 Latex primer: $15.18 each
• 2 1-gallon cans of Valspar paint in “Mudslide”: $31.33 each
• 2 tubes of woodfiller: $2.83 each
• Mouse hand sander: $0 (already had it)
• 2 packages of Mouse sanding pads in 120 grit (4 pack each): $4.73 each
• Angled paint brush: $0 (already had)
• TOTAL: $179.73

But hold the presses before you take in that number. Since we ended up returning or not using a few items from the list, we can deduct some of those digits from the final total:

• 30 25 contemporary brushed nickel drawer/door pulls: $38.33
• 4 packages 1 package of tack cloths (2 pack): $1.99
• 3 2 mini plastic paint roller trays: $2.82 each
• 1 mini paint roller handle + 1 4-inch roller: $4.73
• 1 4-inch paint roller refill (2 pack): $4.45
• 2 gallons 1/4 gallon of Kilz2 Latex primer: $3.80
• 2 gallons 1/2 gallon of Valspar paint in “Mudslide”: $15.65
• 2 tubes about a tablespoon of woodfiller: approx. 28 cents-worth
• Mouse hand sander: $0 (already had it)
• 2 packages of Mouse sanding pads in 120 grit (4 pack each): $4.73 each
• Angled paint brush: $0 (already had)
• FINAL TOTAL: $79.88

Woa. That’s about $100 from what I thought that total was going to be!!! Especially when you think that it would have cost at the very least $600 to have it done professionally…I have stumped even myself today, folks.

Next on the list: new modern bar stools, a faux backsplash treatment and wallpapering the inside of the open shelving to make it look more intentional. Stay tuned for those updates this spring!!!

For now, we are going to go do our happy dance in the new kitchen…

(If you want to tackle this project but missed the lead-up posts on how to sand, prime and paint topcoats, check those out here, here and here. And always feel free to email us if you have questions at DreamGreenDIY@gmail.com)

 

We are in the homestretch now, folks!! Last week I explained the sanding and priming processes – Today I am divulging anything and everything involved with painting the last two topcoats on our kitchen doors and the cabinet framework. When last I left you, I gave this tiny sneak peak of our final cabinet color – A deep, chocolatey brown from Valspar called “Mudslide”. At that point I had only managed to finish the island, but you’ll see a whole lot more of the color everywhere else today.

As I said last week, John and I came up with a manageable schedule of painting the topcoats for an hour each weeknight to make sure we stayed on track to finish by the weekend. We decided to focus on getting the doors done since that was something John and I could do together (the framework is all sorts of tight spots that is just easier for me to take care of on my own). If you remember, we had all of the cabinet doors arranged in two neat rows in the garage for easy maneuvering.

Our process? First, we unscrewed all of the hinges and hardware, keeping them within identifiable reach so as not to confuse which hardware went with which door. Then, using the angled brush, I put a thin coat of paint into the contours and grooves of the door face. I also did a quick sweep of the sides where the roller couldn’t reach (all illustrated in the photo below). Then John would follow behind me with the roller, making sure to even out all of my streaky brush strokes and coating the rest of the door with a thin topcoat of the brown.

We managed to finish two topcoats on the back of the cabinet doors and flipped them over to start working on the fronts, but then something pretty huge rang a bell in our minds and this had to happen:

All of the doors in their nice happy rows in the garage had to be carted upstairs to take up space on the kitchen floor.

The problem was the weather. As gathered from the side of the paint can, the acceptable temperatures to work with the paint was between 50 and 90 degrees. While the past weekend and beginning of the week itself were unseasonably warm for January in Virginia, the temperature was creeping closer and closer to unacceptable during the day and definitely freezing at night. So we had no choice but to lug everything back up to the kitchen where the wood could soak in all of our indoor insulated heat.

The other problem was that I couldn’t just bring them upstairs and start working right away because the wood was still icy cold. There was no hope for the paint to adhere correctly to the surface, so instead I had to focus on something else: the frame. (Sorry for the awful lighting – I was working on this from about 6:00pm to 7:45p.m. on a Thursday night)

Although our carefully-thought out process had a giant hiccup to deal with, it was nice to get the framework painted – You can see that it made a pretty big difference to the look of the room.

We had finally reached the end of the week and it was time for one last coat on the frame. Here’s what the dried final coat looked like on Saturday morning:

The last step in the painting process was the topcoat on the front of the cabinet doors. It had been two days since we brought the doors up from the drafty garage and they were sufficiently warmed up for paint. I thought it might be a bit easier to work on painting the doors screwed back into the frame, so John helped me put everything back in place. It gave the kitchen a sort of two-tone look.

Time to repeat our door painting process! Again using the angled brush, I painted into the grooves and then the paint roller came in to even everything out.

I’ll spare you the tedious process and just show you the “After” product of the first coat – I left all of the doors open to dry in case paint had crept inside to avoid sticky doors:

While the paint on the doors was drying, we decided to take care of a little detail we had not factored into our work schedule: The back of the drawer fronts.

At one point after having discovered this extra step, I tried to tackle the painting with the drawer fronts still attached. But as you can see, it wasn’t looking very clean or professional. So off came all of the drawer fronts. A quick roll of paint later and they were looking much better.

The last step of the day was to finish the FINAL AND LAST topcoat on the cabinet doors!!! I can’t begin to tell you just have elated I was when I finally got to put that brush and roller down for the last time…

Unfortunately, I’m going to make all of you wait until Wednesday for the final reveal…This post is too overloaded with photos and descriptions for me to throw in our slew of “After” pictures, but I will leave you with this tiny snippet of the final result:

See you back here on Wednesday for an earlier-than-planned reveal, complete with new hardware installed, a crafty and inexpensive alternative to fabric window curtains and a little problem-solving where the drawers are concerned.

Oh, and Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!! Hope it’s an inspiring one for you.