When I married my husband, he “came with a truck and a house” as my brother-in-law so eloquently put it.
He did come with a house, in fact: a lovely, boxy little 1963 Nelson home like so many other here in our little town. It was well maintained and just the right size for a young couple starting out. My mother loved it. She thought it was perfect.
I, on the other hand, immediately saw a challenge. The house was well maintained yes, which was good. But it was stuck solidly and un-apologetically in the 70s. From the honey colored, golden oak cabinets to that oh-so-common brown shag carpet, to the reddish-brown spindle trimmed window cutouts into the living room. Oh, and there was at ELEVEN different types of flooring and carpet in the house. Almost every room was different.
Oh boy, did I see a challenge. First on my list: the kitchen. I had dreams of sweeping white cabinets all the way up to the ceiling, and that is not what my kitchen looked like. It was small and cramped and DARK.
I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know if I could get there. This was in the very beginning of my DIY days, and I lacked the “vision” of what the room could look like. I wanted a white kitchen but I didn’t know that it would look look good, or that I could make it look good.
That’s why the first part of this post is dedicated to all the ideas that I had, and why I didn’t choose them, and why I did choose what I did. For all of you beginner DIYers out there: doing this for the first time is scary! It’s hard to imagine that you can have those stunning before and and after transformations. How to get there? Can I really do this? Will I pick the wrong thing?
Maybe all my research will help you make your decision-that’s what I started here.
(Disclaimer: you guys are going to have to extend some grace for these pictures, they are iphone pictures taken back before I really knew what I was doing!)
Here’s a really poor picture of what the kitchen looked like before:
I didn’t take very many pictures because I guess I hated it so much:
The cabinets!
It is hard to believe that this was once my house.
Ok, now that you have an idea of how awful it was…wait. We never looked at the countertop:
Ok, now we can move on. I researched what I was going to do for more hours than it actually took me to redo the cabinets. At least I think I might have.
I wanted a white kitchen, but I was obsessed with this idea of the grain showing through and making the paint job look “tacky”. I had painted some plywood cupboards in another house white, and because I didn’t choose the right products or colors, they ended up looking terrible, so I REALLY didn’t want to ruin these ones. These cabinets were real oak, and that kind of freaked me out.
I contemplated gel stain, which would allow me to keep the grain and go to darker cabinets. Most of the reason I wanted this is because you have to do minimal prep. I got the idea from this great blog: http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2012/09/bathroom-cabinets-makeover-my-first-ever-grown-up-diy-project.html
I vetoed that idea because the kitchen was already dark, and I thought that adding more dark wood would really make it feel like a dark hole. Gel stain doesn’t really work when you are going lighter, at least, I couldn’t find any good examples. So, I decided I was going to stain the cabinets gray. I scoured the Internet for a method that would not require stripping the entire kitchen down to the grain and could not find one, so there went that idea too. Might as well paint white if I am going to do all that work.
Then, I was going to get the Rustoleum kit and redo my cabinets with that. However I was never completely satisfied with the finished results that I saw online, or their selection of colors. I thought they looked really “re-done” and I didn’t like that-I wanted a professional finish.
Finally, I went back to my original idea of painting the cabinets white. I had a really hard time envisioning what the white would look like. I thought the grain would be too prominent and I hated the weird 70s decorative top that was added on top of my cabinets. I thought those two things would not look good with a white paint job.
Then, I found this blog and it totally blew my mind! I had inspiration! I had a vision! http://www.remodelandolacasa.com/2012/01/closing-space-above-kitchen-cabinets.html?m=1
This is what she did:
I finally knew what I was going to do. I just needed a little inspiration!
Now I had to decide on the product. I had nightmares about having my kitchen look like the plywood disaster that I mentioned above, so I spent hours upon hours combing through blogs looking for the “right” way to do things, and the “right” product to use.
First of all, I did ALOT of research on how to block the grain of the honey oak. I was obsessed with not getting this “painted plywood” look.
I heard a lot of about Zinsser primer. Lots of people used it to block the grain in the cabinets. Most of them still had a little grain left. One lady used Zinsser primer and painted, sanded, painted, sanded, painted, sanded, painted, sanded, and then painted the color. She said it was as smooth as silk but that sounds like SO much work.
NOTE: I do want to add here, that if you are obsessed about the grain, it is so NOT a big deal. My vision (or nightmare) of tacky looking painted plywood was out to lunch. If you have oak cabinets that are sanded and finished cabinet doors-the finished product is so much different and just so much nicer than those plywood fronts. You don’t have to worry about this.
But if you are still not convinced, you can find her tutorial here: http://www.thelovelyroost.com/2014/05/part-1-painting-cabinets-long-hard-and.html
I also went through so many posts about which paint to use, and in the end, I decided to go with Benjamen Moore Advance Semi-Gloss. It had come up in reviews, but at the end of the day, I saw it in a friend’s house, and really liked what I saw.
https://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-ca/interior-exterior-paints-stains/product-catalog/awiap/advance-interior-paint?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIiJSj1LvT4gIVbf_jBx0HTQXpEAAYASAAEgIHm_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
I cannot sing the praises of this paint enough! It was described to me as a latex paint that acts like an oil. It stays open longer (as in, does not dry right away), and gives the paint a chance to settle and “flow” together which results in a really smooth finish (this helped settle my fears of the grain showing through). It has a long curing time, but when it cures, oh baby, it’s cured! My cabinets have been painted for (EDIT: 5) years now, and there is not a single chip or scrape in them. Even the edges, not a single chip or scrape!
Now that’s paint!
Next part in the series is the most important: proper prep. Do not skip this. This is the most important part.
Have any questions? Leave a comment below and I will be happy to answer!
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