DIY Kitchen Cabinet Project
Well friends...I can finally say I have OFFICIALLY completed my first DIY kitchen reno! A very good family friend of ours has been wanting to redo their cabinets for some time now and when the time felt right I offered to take on the job. Although they laughed and looked at me when I chimed in, I assured them that I was totally, 100% serious and they complied with little to no hesitation. Now those are some GREAT friends if you ask me!
We started the project about 2 weeks ago and let me tell you...there is NO rest for the wicked during a project like this. We worked our butts off but thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. Here's an idea of what the kitchen looked like prior to the Kirby Clan stepping in.
These cabinets were anything short of glamorous and were screaming for a facelift! The huge plus behind this project was that these cabinets were SOLID! This created a great foundation for success!
We got started a couple weeks early by taking the top cabinets off and bringing them back home where I could work on them in my garage for easier access. Let's just say the garage got a little crowded in the process.
I cannot tall you how thankful I am to have had Guy there to help me out! He totally took over the tedious job of tapping everything off and getting all the tarp taped up where it needed to be. I don't know about you but I have NO patience for the prep work...I just want to jump in and get started! Hallelujah for men with patience!
I researched a lot before starting this project about different methods people went about undertaking a project such as kitchen cabinets and here's what I did know:
1. I was on a tight time frame.
2. I had two SMALL children I had to take care of who have little to no regard for WET paint.
3. My friends were gonna be out of town the beginning of May.
So I knew I needed heavy duty, fast drying, efficient paint to take on this project. I found this awesome blog called Savvy Southern Style, and in this particular post she talks about how she used Annie Sloan Chalkpaint to redo her kitchen cabinets. This immediately caught my attention! If I know one thing about chalk paint it's that it dries incredibly fast. What I wasn't sure about was the whole waxing process that goes along with chalk paint (if you've worked with chalk paint at all you know what I'm talking about). The thought of waxing 36+ cabinets, including the frames highly intimidated me. But what I loved about this particular blog was that instead of using wax to finish her chalk paint cabinets, she used Annie Sloan lacquer! In this case lacquer is often times used for highly trafficked areas such as hardwood floors, concrete slabs, etc. And in our case everyone knows how frequent kitchen cabinets are visited, not to mention, slammed, pulled, and "food-y." It didn't take me long to become sold on this method...
The Annie Sloan lacquer offered not only amazing coverage for such a highly used object, but it created a quick and time efficient option for me, while still giving it's owners the ability to wipe and clean its surfaces easily.
When we finally began the painting process we found that it was going to take at LEAST 3 coats of Annie Sloan's "pure white" chalk paint to cover the dark grains of these kitchen cabinets. Yes, three or four coats may seem like a lot but the beauty of this process was that we only had to wait an hour in between each coat before we started the next. Same goes for the lacquer...we applied two VERY thin coats of the lacquer and only had to wait 45-60 minutes in between each coat. This was a GAME CHANGER for us during the whole process of this cabinet project.
When everything was painted and lacquered, we added some simple yet elegant hardware to play off the other appliances in the kitchen. We decided to go with some slender nickel brushed handles for the doors and (my favorite) nickel brushed Nantucket cup handles for the drawers. This simple yet classy look totally changed the feel of the kitchen, not to mention the look!
See for yourself!
Not only did this white paint completely change the look of this kitchen but it pulled out the beautiful lines that were previously hidden in each cabinet and drawer. All in all, we are incredibly pleased with the outcome not to mention the experience! Thank you Wilson Family for putting so much trust in us!
xoxo
If you have any questions please feel free to comment below!
