Kitchen: Phase 1 (Complete)

Our kitchen is finally put back together! Well, almost. We still have to put the panels back that go under the sink but first we need to find new hardware that attaches to hold ouR sponge, scrubber, etc. But besides that we have our kitchen back! All the cabinet doors are back on and the drawers are back in their place (thank goodness- that clutter was stressful!). Now we have our beautiful chocolate kitchen. Ready for the big reveal? Hold on- we have to remind you what the before looked like- so you can really get a feel for how different it looks now :)

BEFORE:

AND AFTER:

We absolutely love it! As it is now there is a huge contrast between our white tile counter tops and the milk chocolatey cabinets but once we get out granite counter tops installed we'll have a perfect balance between our new darker kitchen and our sandy painted walls.

We're going back to order our countertops around September 30th (when they have some extra special deals on granite) and will hopefully have our whole kitchen finished before Halloween! We're so excited! Even with just the paint change it's given our kitchen a whole new fresh look! The granite and door hardware will really just be the icing on the cake :)

A Work in Progress: Painting Our Kitchen

After looking at the paint swatches that we had taped to our cabinets for a week we decided on a milk chocolate brown to paint our cabinets. It would be a nice contrast against our light walls and it matches pretty perfectly with the countertops that we have picked out. So now we begin the process of DIY: paint your kitchen cabinets edition.First things first: we had to remove all of the cabinet doors and drawer fronts and with a kitchen as large as ours that alone was a time consuming endeavor. Thomas bust out his trusty drill and got to work. On top of that- each door and drawer had some sticky goo leftover from the rubber stoppers that were on the back of each of them so that needed to be removed as well before I started painting.
Next it was time for me to tape it all up and paint away. Unfortunately all of the "fail-proof" tape didn't work on our textured walls so I'll still have to go around with touch up paint to cover up what bled under the tape :o(
And now the real process gets started. I went around all the nooks and crannies with a regular paintbrush- just in the places I wouldn't be able to get with a roller. Any brush marks left behind would be easily covered with our polyester roller.

Here's the before. See? Lots of cabinets!

This is after I got all the nooks and crannies...And what they look like with two beautiful coats applied:
Now we just have to wait a few days to make sure that they are completely dry. In the meantime I went around with a craft sponge brush to get all the little extra nooks around the cabinets that are just too small to get a roller or a paint brush in there. Using a steady hand my DIY paint job looks just as good as if we were to pay someone $3,000 to do it for us. (That's an actual quote that we got- that's when we said "FORGET THAT! We're doing it ourselves!)

You'll have to wait for the next post to see what the kitchen looks like when it's all put together with the new paint. In the meantime, I've included a picture of what our kitchen looks like at this very moment- a mess! So stressful! I can't wait for it to be finished and everything to be put back in it's rightful spot!

Kitchen Makeover- The Beginning

Our home was used as a rental property for years before we purchased it. As a result, many of the fix-its around the house were done poorly and cheaply. As time goes on we find more and more things that aren't up to par but nothing serious has really come up- so far everything is fixable. For example: our ancient front door hardware- replaced, the rotten toilet parts- fixed, the broken sprinkler system- we're working on it.

This house needs a lot of tlc that it just hasn't been getting. With our newly acquired rebate we decided that the first thing that needs a facelift is our dated kitchen. We've got white tile countertops with stained grout that seems to embody all the colors of the rainbow embedded in the 15 year old grout. Yuck. The cabinets aren't in bad shape, but they need to be refinished and have some hardware added. Luckily the inside of the cabinets look brand new! We've already tackled replacing the old appliances and adding a microwave over the stove... but now it's time to get into the big time stuff!

But before we jump all the way into a kitchen renovation we decided to sand down the backside of one of the cabinet doors and stain it the color we were thinking of doing the kitchen. Thank goodness for sample size stains! It looked awful! The wood grain in the door sucked up so much of the stain that it was many shades darker than the rest- not the look we are going for at all. So instead of staining, we have decided to paint.

I picked out a bunch of paint swatches and taped them to one of the cabinets so that I could look at them for a few days in different lights before settling on a color. I also got a paint sample to paint the cabinet door to make sure that the paint went on smooth and evenly.
If all goes according to plan- this weekend will be dedicated to painting the cabinets. Keep an eye out for the next post to be the after pictures! Soon after that we should be looking into getting our new countertops! Re-doing the kitchen is going to be giving our whole house a facelift!!! We're really excited about it!