Kitchen Facelift

Okay, this post is for all of you d.i.yers who have toyed with the idea of painting your kitchen/bathroom cabinets but have been too scared to.

A year and a half ago the fam and I moved to a new house. We have been slowly renovating her and welcoming her to the 2000's. (She was just a little outdated, grapevine wall paper, pink counters...gah.) Of all the renovations, the kitchen has probably been our biggest transformation.

The bones were there...good, solid oak cabinets, but a little "1980's" and definately a lot blah.

I knew that I wanted to paint the cabinets white. As much as I enjoy look of wood, the cabinets and floors combined were a little too much.


That's Avery...eating a bowl of cereal.

I started the process by taking the doors off in sections. I figured if I did a little at a time I wouldn't feel quite as overwhelmed. I bought all of my paint and primer at Sherwin Williams. I would totally recommend the products I used. It was a little expensive, but worth every penny. Besides I only ended up needing a can of each...primer and paint. (The primer I used was called Adhesion Primer. The stuff is freaktastic. It creates an awesome foundation for the paint to stick to. The paint I used was designed specifically for doors and trim. It's called ProClassic and it dries super hard so there's no need to apply a protective coating. BONUS!)
Here's what it looked like after my first section was done.



My kitchen cabinets were quite plentiful, so I ended up painting about four different sections over the course of two or three days. I would paint and then reattach my doors as I went along. (I actually rolled the paint on with a small door/trim roller. This technique helped the paint go on nice and smooth and even.)

Once I had all of the cabinets painted I reattached them, then added hardware. Adding hardware, in my opinion, can drastically change the look of your cabinets alone. But, if you decided to paint and change hardware you can make your kitchen look completely transformed.

And look, when you turn them upside down they make a smiley face...which is exactly how they make me feel every time I look at them.

Here she is finished.

Before :(


After :)


I ended up spending $50 on primer, and $50 on paint. I bought 28 knobs for my cupboards and 14 pulls for my drawers and spent just under $300 on all of the hardware. That's a grand total of $400.
When I called around for bids, the lowest one came in at $3,000. By doing it myself, I saved $2,600...BOO-YA.
So...if you're thinking about giving your kitchen a facelift, I say do it. It's not as hard, scary or expensive as you think.

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