Kitchen Remodel

I think I'm finally ready to share the details of painting our kitchen cabinets and our little kitchen remodel.  I'll try to be brief and detailed at the same time. 
Step 1 - Hate your heavily grained oak cabinets.

This was our kitchen when we first moved in.  Too much wood for me.

Step 2 - Remove all cabinet doors

We left the drawers in place.  It's difficult to screw the faces back onto the drawer and get it right, so I just painted the fronts in place.  Clean all the doors and drawers and LIGHTLY sand.  Corey used an electric sander which really got the finish off, but it caused major problems later, which I will discuss later.  So just a light hand sand, to give something for the primer to stick to.

Step 3 - Prime all the doors, drawers and cabinet bases.

Use an OIL-BASED primer.  You can paint latex paint over an oil-based primer just not latex over oil paint.  I hand primed all the cabinet bases with a small roller.  NOT A SPONGE roller, but one that is like a regular paint roller.  The sponge rollers leave bubbles and just don't give a nice finish.  Corey bought a professional sprayer for $300 and it was worth every penny.  He set up a little spray room and went to town.  You can see his clothes line drying set up too.  They were all over the basement, but it made it go so quickly.  You can hand paint the doors, but the trick is finding places to let them dry.  It's just a longer process, but it will still look good.  Be patient.

Step 4 - Paint

We used Sherwin Williams Pro Classic door and trim paint.  It's a water-based paint but is an enamel, so it's a much harder, smoother finish.  It's worth spending the extra money for better paint in this case.  Get a good door and trim paint.  I chose a satin finish, but probably could have gone with semi gloss.  I don't like super shiny things, but semi gloss will be easier to clean.  Again use the same kind of roller as you did with the primer.

Step 5 - Cry

Here's what our doors looked like after 2 coats of primer, 2 coats of paint and a couple of trips to the paint store for advice.

See all the yellow streaks?  That's what happened because Corey sanded them too well, and we didn't use that oil-based primer.  Sherwin Williams is actually reimbursing us some money, because the primer didn't hide all stains like it was supposed to.  That's nice of them, but we put the doors in place to see if it would fade and it didn't get better.  I had to buy the oil-based primer, reprime the fronts and add another coat of paint.  I didn't want to remove them all again, so I did this in place by hand which caused the ever-so-smooth finish from spraying them to be lost.  Riley kept telling me that no one will be rubbing their hands all over the doors to see how smooth they are, but it bothers me.  Maybe one day when I am feeling bored, I'll take them all down again and spray them one more time.  For now, I'll just stop touching them and enjoy the fact that they are no longer streaky.

Step 6 - Replace the doors.

Step 7 - Add Hardware

I searched the internet for cool hardware and found pulls that were $15 a piece and knobs for $8 a piece.  After doing the math, I continued my search and ended up at HomeDepot.com.  I found these Martha Stewart pulls for $4.98 each and matching knobs for $3.97 each.  If you check them out, I have even left a review on the pulls.  Guess which review is mine.  Great deal and great look. 

That's about it for that part.  Just know that you're going to have to wipe them up more to keep them looking clean.  You'll get some chips and have to touch it up.  You'll use your magic eraser to get scratches off too.  It's more upkeep to have a white kitchen, but I love it so much that it's worth it to me.  You can always add a step and add some glaze to antique them.  This will help hide chips and stains better.  That's just not the look I want right now.  I was tempted to paint the lower cabinets gray as well, but didn't want to have to repaint them when I decide I don't like gray anymore.  If I had an island, I would have painted it gray for sure. 

Speaking of islands and peninsulas, here's what we did to straighten ours out.

I don't know why, but angled things drive me insane.  Here's what our peninsula looked like when we moved in.  I hate the angle.  Don't even get me started on kiddie corner beds!  Anyway, I knew this had to be fixed.  Ideally I would have liked to take the peninsula off and make an island in the middle of the room.  Unfortunately that would have left the oven hanging off on the end all alone.  No good.  So instead of moving gas lines, water lines and wasting money, I went with a straight peninsula.

We removed all the panels and countertop from the peninsula.

Sparks were really flying.  Corey was just cutting screws off.

Ahhhh! Straight lines. Thank goodnes the wood floors ran under the peninsula. I applied a little stain to match it up until we refinish all the floors.  Now we just have to fill in the blank space.  I would love a microwave drawer, but don't want to spend $800 on a popcorn popper.  So we did some research and tracked down our exact cabinets.  We'll order a couple of drawers to fill in the space.  You can never have too many drawers.

Next came the granite and backsplash.  Here is what the white kitchen looked like after the granite install, and after we installed the marble hexagon backsplash tiles.  I love the color we chose.  It's called Kashmire White. 

I installed the backsplash myself.  Corey did all the hard work of cutting tiles on his wet saw, but it was a fairly simple job.  This is before grout.

 We added trim to the back side of the peninsula.  Now we just need to finish up a couple of things and it will be officially remodeled.