Our mini kitchen remodel is finally finished! My husband and I just bought our first house about 2 months ago! It is an older house built in 1942 but nearly everything had been updated. Although the kitchen had been updated, it was still rather bland. Tan cabinets, tan counter tops and tan walls- Yuck! We knew this kitchen needed some work but we saw the potential in the midst of the tan haze. On the plus side the kitchen is rather large for the area where we live with abundant cabinet space. It has beautiful white ceramic tile floors, a cool pull out faucet head, and a dishwasher! (We haven't had a dishwasher in 5years!) We fell in love with the area at the end of the kitchen (see the last before picture). It has the feel of a swanky butler pantry and we knew it would be great for entertaining which we do often. Our understanding is that this area was added about 5 or 6 years ago when they put the dining room addition on the back of the house. This was most likely an eat in kitchen years ago.
Here are the Before pictures:
Here is the kitchen that inspired our remodel from my favorite blog Young House Love - The Story Of Two Young People Falling In Love With Their First House: http://http/www.younghouselove.com/
I loved the fresh white cabinets the cool airy blue walls in this picture. I knew it would be perfect for our kitchen as well. So we got to work painting the cabinets white inside and out. Then after four tries we finally found the perfect airy shade of blue for the walls (Olympic paint in Breakwater). We decided to keep the same hardware. It was important to us to have some warm elements to balance the coolness of the walls and cabinets and the hardware has a nice warm bronzy finish. We also added a sea grass rug and blinds to further achieve this goal.
After:
What do you think? It turned out pretty nice didn't it?! We love it! It definitely has the clean airy feel we were going for and we did all this for under $100!
There is still a lot I would like to do to our kitchen. The dishwasher has been updated to a stainless steel model. I would like to switch the fridge and the stove to stainless as well. I keep thinking about changing the light fixture above the sink to a pendant light like the one in the inspiration picture. I dream of beautiful black granite counter tops. I am currently looking for a runner rug for the longer part of the kitchen. I would also like to someday put glass in the upper cabinet doors of the cabinets in the second to last picture. Someday.....
How to paint your cabinets:
-wipe down cabinets to remove dust and debris
-remove all cabinet doors and set up in an unused area. We used our empty dining room.
-remove all hardware (I would recommend keeping these organized to make it easier to put back on)
-decide now if you will use old hardware or buy new just in case the spacing on the new hardware is different than the old- drill new holes for hardware if necessary.
-sand doors for a smooth finish
-prime everything with one coat of an oil based primer- wool or polyester rollers work great for the surfaces and a tapered paint brush works best for any indentations.
-switch brushes- do not use primer brushes for painting
-paint everything with 2 coats of a white semi-gloss latex paint
-paint back sides of doors first so if anything messes up when you flip them over it won't show on the outside
-wait about 3-5 days to ensure everything is nice and dry
-hang cabinets
-celebrate!
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