As you may have read in one of my previous posts we had a flood at our house and since January we have been working on restoring everything in our basement, well this post isn't about that, but what I call the "trickle effect". I have been working for months on painting and redoing the basement and I finished the painting in the basement and I had some paint left over,(uh, oh!) I had quite a bit of paint left over and thought, I should repaint the kitchen. Why would I want to do more painting when that is all I have done for the past several months? Because it makes everything look so fresh an clean! Above is the before picture of my kitchen, I don't have a lot of before pictures because I was just going to paint the walls a different color.
Here is a better picture of the paint before.As you notice the trim is painted a dark red rust color.
Here is an after with the paint, I love the white trim and how fresh and clean it looks, and this is where we come to the "trickle effect". I loved the white so much that I decided that I should paint my cabinets as well. If you notice in the before picture the cabinets were a dark cream with a brown glaze on the top of them.
A close up of the trim.
Well after lots of work this is the after!
I never have really liked what my cabinets looked like before. Before this paint treatment they were a dark oak color. I didn't like them because of this routed pattern in the cabinet. They are super solid cabinets and even thought they are old and dated, I haven't had any problems with them because the wood is solid and they were well made, so I couldn't justify ripping them all out. I saw a post and I wish I could remember where I saw it but she had refaced her plain cabinets. I loved how it changed them, but how was I going to reface mine when they had this little arch at the top. I bought some wood filler and filled in the little arch, let it dry, sanded it, and filled it and sanded it again. I then gave all of the cabinets a good coat of primer.
In the post I had looked at she had gone to the lumber store and had them cut a 4x8 foot piece of ply wood into 2 inch strips. Well, when I asked my local lumber store to do the same thing, they replied they couldn't and then the other big box place said, "I wouldn't like the results because they didn't have a finish blade on there saw and it would be rough. I do have a cabinet mill here in my little town and so I thought to call them and see if they could help. Yes! I gave them the dimensions of 1/4 inch thick and 2 inch wide strips and they even sanded them for me! I told them I would be painting them and they suggested poplar. With my husbands help he sawed and used a brad nailer to attach the strips to the drawer and cabinet fronts.
This is a drawer front.
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Then after all of that work, the painting began. I filled the little cracks in with some putty and using a foam roller began the painting. I actually started with the backs and did 2 coats on the back first. Then I did 3 coats to the fronts.
Yes, there are a lot of cabinet doors, 32, to be precise, so it overtook my dining room kitchen and hallways.
Aren't they looking good though, with their white coat of paint!
Yes, they are looking fabulous! I left the cabinets under the sink the dark oak color, because my hubby thought it would be too much white. It kind of helps blend in the dark dishwasher.
Can you see the little decorative arch? Nope because it disappeared!
I am going to have to give a tutorial for the chevron back splash later because I love how that turned out.
Love it!
I have a collection of Jadeite that kind of got lost in the dark oak but with this white it really pops!
I love this color of green,(that's why I started collecting it.)
I also left my china cabinet dark, but I'm thinking it might get a coat of a paint too,(Shh, don't tell.) I want to get rid of the little scalloped border on the bottom of the cabinet as well, it kind of dates the cabinets.
I have to tell you about the hinges. I did splurge and bought some new hinges but the week I bought them, my hubby was out of town for a week and I wanted to have them all finished when he got home.
When I got the hinges and tried to put them on they were a tiny bit wide and didn't fit the cabinets. I was so disappointed but knew I wanted the cabinets to hang perfectly. In the middle of the night, 3:00 AM to be precise, I had some inspiration. Get up and wash and scrub the old hinges and give them a coat of paint! I couldn't go back to sleep so I got up and did just that. I scrubbed and dried them and I had some oil rubbed bronze spray paint just waiting for me downstairs on my paint cabinet,( I told you it was inspiration,) I gave them a light coat of spray paint and they looked better that the ones I had bought. I took the new hinges back and saved myself $100.00!!
I did get rid of the scallop above the sink and love the clean straight line.
In this picture you can see the old style that used to be there. When we moved in we removed the cabinets that went across the top of the counter.(It was a solid bank of cabinets that really closed in the kitchen. We also added the spot lights to the top where the cabinets used to hang. See, the shelves with the baskets? That used to be a cabinet that opened to this side of the counter. We removed the door and the side of the cabinet and left the shelves and I just put 3 baskets there.
We are finished!!
Ah, it was a lot of work but so worth it!
