Cabinet Paint Reveal!

So after 3 poorly documented days of work, we put our kitchen back together. This project was my birthday present and I am THRILLED with how it came out. Looking at the before pictures just blows my mind. Here  we go!

The last step before being done done was to add the new hardware. Thecabinets previously had none at all, so we had to drill the holes for the new ones. I choose a brushed nickel pull with some lttle cutouts for some visual interest

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We added them to all the drawers, and all the doors except for the ones above the stove. We have always wanted to retro fit in a microwave hood, which would mean those doors would have to go, so I didn’t bother adding the pulls.

It was fairly straightforward. Almost too easy….since the Mr got so into a groove that he was doing all the doors so fast he drilled 3 of them on the WRONG SIDE. Like, right next to a hinge a didn’t notice, lol.

 

 

 

Now, the painting project was officially DONE!

 

Again, the before:

 

Now the AFTER!

 

BAM! How about them apples??

 

As you can see, we took down the cabinet over the fridge. Even 6’4” Clint could barely reach it so it was pretty useless. I love the open feeling of it being gone, and I got my beautiful glass bowl that I had been eyeing forever at Pier 1 to go on the wall.

 

Let’s look at some more angles :)

 

 

 

There it is. We will be adding a hood microwave and someday redoing the countertops, but for now its love.

Cabinet Painting, Part 2

So, when we last left off, Mr Two One Ohh was starting to prime the cabinet doors with his fancy fancy sprayer.


All should have been right in the world. The glorious smooth finish should have been having me dance and sing with happiness and joy. Alas, it was not to be.

See, by deciding he needed the fanciest sprayer they sell at Home Depot, Mr had gotten one that has a pump and a very long hose. Why is that a problem? It takes half a gallon of paint to get the thing to start spraying. Which meant 1 coat of primer on the backs of the doors took an ENTIRE GALLON of primer. No bueno.
This sprayer was supposed to be used in a 5 gallon bucket, where you had a long way to go in the can. We did not. It was a disaster. After much hemming and hawing I told him we executive decided the sprayer had to go. If John & Sherry can do it with a brush and roller, so can we!
This was all good until the next morning when we went to flip over the doors.
(For those of you wondering about the cabinet boxes, I had primed those by hand in no time flat, rather uneventfully.



SO! Saturday morning was here and we went to flip the doors. For those of you who aren’t big painters, here's the thing. Primer is sticky. That’s its job. To make paint stick to it. Imagine with me if you will, a cocoon of plastic tarping making a little room which had been sprayed with copious amounts of primer. As soon as you walked in your feet stick to the covered-in-overspray ground.
It was rather unpleasant, but carry on we must. We flipped the doors over and spent the day priming the fronts.
The trouble came when it was then time to flip them back over for paint. Remember our fancy lifters from part 1, soda cans and Solo cups? Well the primer had  done its job and they were all stuck to the primed back of the doors. Like, we had to pull them off which left rings of bare wood on all the doors. I.was.PISSED. My poor mister got a full on temper tantrum directed at him for his decision to use a “stupid mother effing expensive damn sprayer” when I wanted to do it by hand in the first place. I’m not proud of it.

We soldiered on. We had to do a light sanding and re-prime the spots that were damaged and wait for it to dry again. We also had to replace all the plastic that was under the cabinets with fresh un-sticky stuff so we had somewhere to lay the doors that wouldn't cause the same problem again.

Then came the paint. We went with the same paint John & Sherry used. Seriously, don’t take my post as a tutorial. I’m not a good teacher. Just read theirs. We just tried to do everything they said to do.
Just like the primer, the paint went on the boxes smooth as butter in no time flat. If we didn’t have doors this would have been the easiest project ever.

 
The doors were tedious, but we got it done. It was a whole lot of roll, brush, dry. Over and over again.

Now we are ready for the fun part….the reveal!

Cabinet Painting, Part 1

So, the weekend was finally here. The Mr and I had both taken Monday off work so we could rock this project out with our full concentration. In case you have forgotten, here is what we started with (after heavy cleaning and light decorating)


This is what we worked with for the fist year and a half of living here.  Perfectly functional, but not so pretty. So, we made the decision to paint the cabinets. They were in great shape (the house was only built in 2006 people) plus we are super cheap so it was a go. We had actually talked about it since we first got the house but knowing what a huge project it was just kept putting it off. That is until my idols, the Brand and Angelina of blogging themselves John & Sherry did their kitchen cabinets. then I was all….its on.
So! By the time Clint got home from work Friday I had already removed all of the door and hinges from the kitchen.



Which I promptly took no pictures of. But trust me, its alot of doors.

Then we spent far too many hours cleaning, sanding and deglossing all the surfaces. Thank baby Jesus for deglosser. We only had to do a light sanding because of it. It made the job much, much easier. Now on to paint!

So the Mr, being the gadget-o-phile he is decided we should buy a paint sprayer for the job. He also decided we needed the heavy duty professional kind that sucks the paint right out the the can (no pouring!)
After taking all the doors down, I began to set up the Dexter kill room paint booth in our garage.



Notice our very professional door lifters, empty soda cans and beer pong cups. What you see there is about half the doors. The ground was also covered in them on the other side of the tables.
So, Mr fires up his sprayer and starts getting his prime on.


Looks like its going great, right??

Wrong.

See you for part 2. :-)