Kitchen Cabinet Update

Hello again, I’m back! It’s been a busy and crazy past couple months, and while I would love fill you in on what has been happening in our lives on the farm, I thought I would first share with you one of our most recent house projects. We FINALLY finished painting our upper kitchen cabinets! It was long overdue, and for good reason…it took forever and was definitely a challenge. There were 35 cabinet doors (32 when we started) and each one was slightly different than the others. And although we originally made a chart and numbered each door, some (about half) the numbers were wiped off in the liquid sandpaper/deglosser stage. Let’s just say that putting the doors back up was like a challenging jigsaw puzzle that took us 2 days to figure out.

I’ll start with the details of how we prepped the cabinets. First, we removed the doors from the cabinet base, as well as the old handles, hinges and magnetic close mechanisms. Like I said, we made a chart and numbered the doors as we did this, which is something I highly recommend doing if you are attempting this type of project. It will save you a headache later on. Then we used a liquid deglosser/ sandpaper product that you simply wipe on the wood to clean and rough up the existing surface so that your next coats of paint will adhere better. Then, it was time to fill all of the holes from the old handle pulls. The old handles were placed at an angle and we wanted the new ones to be vertical, so this was necessary. While I filled in all the holes, I left it to the the hubs to use the palm sander and sand them once they were dry. Next, I used an extreme bonding primer from Sherwin Williams, on both the front and back of the cabinet doors and the cabinet base. For the primer, I mainly used a brush except for flat part of the doors, that’s where I used a 3.5 inch roller with a rounded end (like this one). This roller made the 6 coats of paint and primer we applied go a lot faster and more even. Once the primer had fully dried, I painted our cabinets and doors with a Sherwin Williams Cashmere white paint. It’s nice and thick and coats evenly which made the finished look absolutely gorgeous!

After painting everything (I thought was going to be the longest, hardest part…) we had to put on new hinges, hardware and re-hang them. While I got a great deal on the cabinet handles, our biggest expense in our kitchen makeover was (believe it or not) the new hinges. Because it was too much added work and cost to switch to concealed hinges or soft-close hinges, we chose white hinges on the upper cabinets to match and black ones on the lower cabinets.

Once we got everything put back together, we were amazed at how clean and bright the kitchen looks. It has definitely changed the feel of the entire space and given us new energy as we head into springtime. Here are a few pictures of the new kitchen cabinets for you to see. And please excuse the dishes and clutter on my countertop…I almost didn’t post this as I was waiting to get better photos. Immediately after we finished this, my husband dove into another project in the kitchen, and it is a little torn apart while we are finishing that up. I hope you enjoy!

Next up for the kitchen is new countertop and backsplash. If you have any questions or ideas, please feel free to share them with us!