Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Kitchen Cabinet MAKEOVER!

Hello and happy Tuesday! Just typing the title of today's post filled me with joy because we have FINALLY finished re-doing our kitchen cabinets! This is a project that has been on our to do list for a little over four years (literally since we moved into this house). Don't get me wrong, we've done A LOT to the kitchen in those four years. We've added a backsplash, changed the countertops, replaced the sink and the fridge, painted (painted again), added beadboard, etc. However, we always knew the last piece of the puzzle would be the cabinets. You know the old expression we've saved the best for last? Yeah, that doesn't apply when talking about re-doing cabinets. We ended up getting stuck at home for Labor Day weekend (boo) so the husband decided what better time to undertake this huge project we had been putting off for forever. Also to note, doing it labor day weekend did allow us to take advantage of Home Depot's many labor day sales. Thank you paint rebates! "We'll finish by Monday" he said. I still like to remind him that he once said this because clearly he (we) had NO idea what we were talking about. Per usual, I forgot to document the process...unless you count snapchat videos, which I will not bore you with. But, I can certainly list out the steps that we took and try to link any specific materials we used to the best of my abilities. Here we go:

1) Clean. The. Cabinets. You may look at your cabinets and think they're clean enough. They don't really look that bad. You would be wrong. I was absolutely disgusted with the amount of grease and grime that came off of ours (especially the range hood). Now to be fair, this could have very well been 30 years worth of nastiness that had built up. Our house, as I always say, is older than I am and the cabinets are the original. Either way though, they were NASTY and we spent the first night of this project scrubbing and scraping away EVERYTHING. We used this Method brand natural wood cleaner that we picked up at Target (my greatest love) and it was super effective. I'll link it here.


2) After we had them all cleaned and de-greased, it was time to remove the doors, drawers, hardware, and hinges. Now, this is a CRUCIAL step in this process, especially if you have a million cabinets and drawers like we do, LABEL, LABEL, LABEL. We used some blue painters tape to label every cabinet and drawer with their corresponding space in the frame. We also made sure to keep each one of their hardware and hinges all together in little ziploc bags and labeled those as well. This really turned out to be an unnecessary step because we ultimately decided to replace the hardware in the end, but it's still a good idea to do just to be safe.

3) Now, once you've got all that out of the way, it's time for sanding. We used an orbital sander and 220 grit sandpaper all over the doors and frames of the cabinets just to remove any grime that was left as well as the shiny topcoat so the surface underneath would grip the paint and primer more easily. 

4) Priming. Ahhh, priming. Not my favorite step by any means but let me tell you when it came time to paint, I was SO happy that we had taken the time to prime like crazy. We used a relatively cheap primer because we needed A LOT of it. We normally don't prime when we paint...so I was annoyed that this step was even necessary. But boy was it NECESSARY. This is the primer we used. I'll link it here.

We applied our primer with a combination of high density foam rollers (the 4 inch kind) and foam brushes (mainly for edging against the ceiling and whatnot).

5) After what felt like a million years of priming, it was finally time to start painting. I also feel like I should have mentioned, we painted all of the cabinet doors and drawers outside in our garage using my in-law's paint sprayer. I cannot even imagine how much longer this project would have taken if we hadn't had that thing. I highly recommend if you are doing any sort of cabinet makeover. Okay, back to painting. 
We used our favorite paint, the Behr Premium Plus Ultra in a custom color matched white shade. I tried so many different white colors that were recommended for cabinets, and none of them worked for me. I am super super picky when it comes to white. I know I know, white is white, right? Wrong! Some whites look yellow, some look blue, some look so bright they almost glow in the dark. None of those would do. Weirdly enough, what I ended up doing was taking a piece of the white primed beadboard and having that white color color-matched for our paint. I know, I'm insane. But it worked! We used the same paint to paint over the already primed beadboard in our kitchen just to cover up any finishing nail heads or imperfections. It is the BEST white. It is the perfect white (in my humble opinion of course). We got it in a satin sheen because that was sort of the minimum amount of shiny that was recommended for kitchen cabinets.


6) FINALLY after days and days, coat after coat, priming and painting were completed and it was time to seal. I'm not going to lie, the thought of putting any sort of sealant on the freshly painted cabinets was daunting. So many sealers are advertised as completely clear or non-yellowing, but they LIE! We have certainly been burned before. When we re-painted our coffee table somewhat recently, we were recommended a water-based polyurethane that would (supposedly) not alter the color of the table at all. False. It turned that thing yellow before we could even get it inside the house. I was so annoyed. I certainly was not about to take that chance on these cabinets that we had already sunk days and days of our time into. So, I started doing some research and came across this company called Artisan Enhancements. Now, let me just go ahead and say that this stuff was not cheap by any standards. BUT, it was totally non-toxic, low odor, and made SPECIFICALLY for bright white paint. I mean, come on. It's perfect. We have now used it not only on all the cabinetry but also on our kitchen table and our formerly yellowed coffee table. I LOVE IT! I'll link it here as well.

7) So, once we got every single inch sealed and let it dry completely (for about 36 hours) we were finally ready to put the cabinets back together. As I mentioned earlier, we actually decided during the process that we wanted to get new hardware for the new look. At first, we were looking at home depot but their prices were just way WAY too much for how many pulls and knobs we needed. So, I shopped around online and found a fantastically priced alternative on build.com

These are the pulls and knobs that we ended up ordering. They are satin nickel and we absolutely love how much they updated the cabinets (it's nuts). 



We ended up keeping our existing hinges in order to save money as well as the headache of trying to figure out exactly which ones we would need to order. They were super gross looking however so we soaked them in a de-greasing spray overnight before spray painting them with this satin nickel spray paint linked here. It turned out to be a very quick and easy process and we finished them off with a clear sealing spray as well.


So without further ado, here are the WAY befores (aka the photos from our house before we bought it) and afters. Just to show you the complete overhaul of the kitchen from the last 4 years.










I hope this post has been in any way helpful to you if you are considering re-doing your kitchen cabinets. I will say, though it was a TON of work, it we well worth it in the end! Thanks for reading!


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