My Kitchen Remodel

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I’ve been in my house for over 18 years and every few months or so since we moved in, I’ve told myself that I needed to remodel the kitchen. It never happened. I had it in my mind that I needed to gut the entire room and start from scratch. My cabinets were horrible and I hated the layout. I don’t have a pantry and my countertop space is so limited it’s hard to actually prepare an entire dinner without having to use my dining table as extra space.

After adding up the numbers for a brand spanking new kitchen, my cheap self decided that I really didn’t want to spend the money. My only other option was to paint the cabinets. Not really an idea I found appealing, but I knew that if I wanted a new look to the kitchen, it was my only real option.

So I went on a serious Google search to find out the best way to paint. I read blog posts galore and watched YouTube videos and I decided that I could do this!

Of course, I got ahead of myself and started taking off the cabinet doors before I even took a full kitchen photo of the “before”. So here’s what I got anyway.

Pretty horrible, isn’t it?

I used the Sherwin Williams Pro Classic in white. It’s pricey but they are always having sales on it and I only needed one gallon to cover everything (I have a really small kitchen space).

I was hoping not to have to sand everything down, but after cleaning and degreasing about a dozen times (yes, they were that disgusting), I decided I needed to do the sanding anyway. Which I did.

The people at the paint store also said that I wouldn’t need primer. I primed anyway. And glad I did. So, I cleaned, degreased, sanded, primed, and then I was ready to paint. I painted one coat and hated the way they looked. The roller that was suggested by everyone didn’t work for me. They looked like crap.

Temera helping me paint.

So I ended up using an angled paintbrush and even after two coats I wasn’t totally happy with the results. The paint was supposed to be self-leveling but it didn’t look like it was working. Until the next day.

The cabinet doors and drawers were left to dry in my garage overnight and when I looked at them the next morning, I LOVED them! The paint was clean and smooth. It leveled out so that you didn’t see any of the brush strokes. Awesome!

Painting the base cabinets was the easy part, but then it was time to hang the doors.

The original hinges weren’t an option since when I took them off, they basically crumbled. The springs were like dust. Who knew it would be so difficult to find replacement hinges? Well, it was a nightmare. Turns out, the exact size hinges were impossible to find. Pretty sure they aren’t even made anymore. Luckily, the holes that were already in the cabinet faces were the same size as the new ones, but we (and by WE, I mean DAVID) had to drill new holes in the backs of the cabinet doors. What a pain! This slowed down the entire kitchen remodel process. Not happy!

I’m not sure I would have been able to do this without David. Okay, I probably would have figure it out but it would have taken me an extra few months. Nice to have a handy husband… I highly recommend it.

So, it took longer than I wanted, but my kitchen remodel was almost done. We added a few cabinet pulls and I did some repair to my tile countertop grout.

Am I happy with the kitchen? Yes. I still need to add the drawer pulls because it’s not that easy to drill double holes and make them even. I wasn’t happy with the way they looked so I’m on the hunt for an alternative solution.

So, what have I learned from this process? I would definitely consider doing this again. I think it’s a pain in the *ss but for the price of the remodel (less than $200), it’s so worth it. The kitchen may not be exactly like I want it (the footprint is still the same and I still don’t have a pantry) but for what it is, it’s pretty gorgeous.

And because it made such a huge change in my house, I decided I really needed to repaint my kitchen island too. So I did.

We purchased this as a floor model from Orchard Hardware many moons ago. Since my kitchen didn’t have a built-in island, we needed something to add for extra storage and counter space. It came looking like this – a little antiqued – but the cream color wasn’t cutting it in my new all-white kitchen. So I painted it.

This time, I decided to try chalk paint. I purchased the Rust-oleum Chalked Paint from Amazon, along with the Rust-oleum Chalked Matte Clear Protective Topcoat. I didn’t have to sand the piece before I used the paint and it came out awesome! I love it! I gave it two coats of the paint and one coat of the topcoat… and I still had a ton of paint leftover for other projects around the house.

The knobs are vintage-inspired and came from Hobby Lobby. I am in love with them!

So here is the finished room. It’s so much brighter, and looks so much bigger, than it was before. I love the new look so much that I now have to sweep through the rest of the house and make it all fit in with this look.

More to come…