Kitchen renovation, road map to redo cabinets

before: kitchen at purchase

kitchen before

The kitchen window that was just completed, has just about finished our kitchen renovation.  I am going to use the next couple of postings to outline the process we followed to get to this point. Let me point out that this renovation has taken almost three years to complete. That spread the cost out over a period of time, and it allowed us to do the work ourselves. Needless to say, doing the work yourself saves a lot of money. The more money we saved on this, the more money we had to use elsewhere in this house that needs total renovation. We have no children, but we always made sure our plans included access to food preparation and cooking facilities. Keep that in mind as you take on your own project.


 Step one:  Cabinet Painting Renovation 

cabinet reno painting in process

Upon purchase of our home the kitchen walls were white that had soured over the years to the color of pale mushrooms. The formica countertops were bright primary 1970s yellow.(seen above) They were peeling off of the pressed board due to water damage and wear. It was not a pretty picture.  When you stood to work at the sink, you walked away with sawdust on your abdomin, due to the crumbling structure of the countertops under the formica. Note that the house inspector did not find this problem on inspection.  The cabinets were greasy and as dark brown as a midday cave.You can see them above. Depressing to say the least.

 

after: kitchen cabinets when first painted.
kitchen not completed at this point

My solution to the asylum like color scheme was  to paint everything. Cabinets were first because I couldn't stand them and the way they felt.  It was dramatic and made living in a project house bearable.  It was a good solution, and easy to accomplish, as long as you have the proper tools, motivation and time.



The cabinet painting was never-ending. Each cabinet was dismantled: the doors came off, the hardware was removed, all was scrubbed with a non-sudsing cleaner. I used a special spongy small size roller, 3" and 6" wide, to roll the cabinets with paint, so that I created a satisfactory finish without brush strokes.   Space had to be created to accommodate laying out the doors so that they could be painted front and back, then left to dry and cure. Curing, letting the paint dry through and get hard,  is very important so the paint doesn't peel or knock off the doors.  Much of that work was done right on top of the disintegrating counter tops right in the kitchen. Eventually the cabinet parts took up too much space and we moved the whole production out onto the porch for a few days, when we had a  forecast of good weather. Even then, we had to spread out drop cloths, and make table space with saw horses and sheets of plywood or old doors, to support the cabinet doors while they were worked on, being careful not to spot the porch floors. The kitchen cabinets were painted inside and outside carefully covering all with the white paint so that they would not look like repainted cabinets. If you don't paint the inside of the cabinets they will be dark inside the cabinet and it will be a dead give away that the cabinets are recycled.  Open the doors, and you will see brown not bright white.   All cabinets were painted with high quality primer before being painted with exterior white trim paint. This was to insure that the paint would stay on the cabinets. The painted finish has held up very well, so the additional step of priming the cabinets was worth the extra effort. It also sealed the cabinet to get a better finish on the completed cabinets.  The finish washes well and has held up well to kitchen life. This  cabinet painting was the first step taken to redo this kitchen because it was the cheapest and the most bang for the buck. Painting all cabinets white immediately changed the room. 


As I write this I realize my next posting needs to review the additional little tricks I used to make the cabinets "new", to get the total renovation look. I came up with some small inexpensive changes to the cabinets that brought them up to date in the 2010s and gave them that fresh look of new cabinets. Until next posting, later this week.....