Life Without Lemons: Painting Kitchen Cabinets

KITCHEN RENOVATION

"Don't worry I know what I am doing, I saw it on Pinterest"

Well there has been not so much action around here when it comes to things cooking in my kitchen but that has something to do with what I have been doing to my kitchen! When we bought our new house one of the things we compromised on was the kitchen. I spend a lot of my time pottering about my kitchen and our new house's kitchen was rather lacking. Functionally it was OK, not so much counter space but the cupboard doors were solid wood and in great condition. Unfortunately the stain on them was chipped and flaking off (not easy to see on my before pictures, but trust me it was like a week old nail polish stain after a hard week!)

My darling hubby was all for saving up and tearing the old one out and replacing it. I on the other hand did my research and was confident that I could turn this old baby around and make a great kitchen for myself!

Here she is in all her old glory. Very dark and enclosed! We added in the Island from Ikea when we first moved in to extend our work area and add an area for quick breakfasts and homework projects after school. The countertop was a nasty off white colour and had large chunks missing from it in places too.

The Island helped inspire how I planned to paint the cupboards going for a black on the bottom with butcher block tops. I wanted to make the kitchen feel bigger so opted for a light grey for the top cupboards.

Here is a little Instagram look at the project;

There is a lot of work to do when painting your kitchen cabinets and most of that is the preparation work done before you even get your paintbrushes out!

But after weeks of (very) hard work we are pretty much done! We are still talking about whether to tile the walls, but for the moment our new kitchen is ready to go.....

Taking out the built in extractor hood and removing the cupboards to the side opened up the space so much.

The top cupboards were de-greased, sanded, primed with 2 coats and then painted with 2 coats of melamine paint.

The bottom cupboards were de-greased, sanded and then finished with 4 coats of black wood stain.

The bars and baskets were from Ikea as was the butcher block countertop.

I had never intended this to be a post about how to refinish your own kitchen as being honest I just read lots of other peoples posts and watched lots of instructional videos on the subject so I am no expert! I will say that it has certainly been a labour of love and as careful as I was in preperation and application you can still see the odd brush stroke and bubble, but we love the extra charm that brings. This is a modern kitchen in a country house and we feel that this look perfectly captures that.

So it's time to get back to cooking, baking and drinking gin in my kitchen (to be honest the gin drinking didn't stop during this renovation, it may even have increased slightly!)

And just as a last hurrah to my kitchen renovation here is the before and after shots in all their glory;