Kitchen Update

In May 2020, after we finished our bathroom remodel, we decided to give our kitchen a facelift. This house was built in the 1940’s and the kitchen was small and dated. At some point, the cabinets had been updated but it wasn’t functional. We also had a young puppy, so at the time we had her crate in the kitchen - easy access to the back door and fenced in yard and the kitchen had vinyl tiles unlike the rest of the house which had wood floors.

I had a wood cabinet that was counter top height and fit our needs at the time, added extra storage and was counter top height for more counter space. But, we wanted to put a table in the kitchen and it wouldn’t fit in addition to the cabinet.

Originally this had a corner cabinet to the right above the sink. While the cabinet was large, it wasn’t functional. It had a small door opening, so if you had pots & pans in there, it really wasn’t functional to rearrange and get something out.

In the garage, we found a 2-door cabinet that must have been there at some point. It fit perfectly and was much more useful for us. Yes the doors on the uppers were slightly different than the cabinets to the left, but I had a plan for that!

For a short period, we installed 2 wood shelves above the sink for added storage. These were removed in the update when we made some other adjustments.

One of my requests was to add a base cabinet to the right of the stove. This kitchen was severely lacking in the counter top area, and we had JUST enough room (if you shifted the stove over 1/2”) to fit a 14” wide base cabinet next to the stove. This also meant we had room to add a 24” wide upper cabinet. SO MUCH STORAGE than the 18” wide pantry cabinet that was there.

Since we had a couple different door styles in the kitchen, we wanted to paint the cabinets to give them an update and make them cohesive.

I found great tutorials by @Paint Life TV on youtube.

Step 1 - remove the hardware and take off the cabinet doors

Step 2 - give everything a good clean. I mean, A REAL GOOD CLEAN. There were so many years of built up kitchen grime on these cabinets, they took a couple passes of TSP cleaner.

Step 3 - fill the holes holes with wood putty. If you are keeping the same size cabinet hardware, you could keep the holes. I was changing the cabinet hardware.

Step 4 - use Aqua Coat wood grain filler to remove the thick wood grain of oak cabinets. This was a good tutorial on youtube.

Step 5 - we set up a makeshift paint shop in our garage. We hung 3 sides of plastic from the rafters to the ground. This tutorial had great ideas about painting doors. We bought a set of wooden hangers and screwed in some hooks. On upper cabinet doors, hooks were installed on the top edge. On base cabinets and drawers, hooks were installed on bottom edge. This way, no holes are visible at eye level.

Step 6 - after the Aqua coat is dry, you’ve done a light sand, wiped the cabinet doors with a tack cloth, you can now paint! We bought this paint sprayer on Amazon and I would highly recommend spraying the doors if you do a kitchen update. It was a bit of a learning curve as we had to figure out the correct viscosity for our paint.

For the Cabinets, we used Valspar Cabinet paint in Filtered Shade.

The kitchen walls are painted Seashell Gray. We also painted the trim Ultra White.

A fresh coat of paint on the ceilings, trim, and walls really brightened up the space! New White vents also update the space.

The countertops were dated and slightly stained. Since the painted countertops turned out nicely in the bathroom, I decided to paint the countertops in the kitchen. Since we weren’t removing the countertops, we used Rust-Oleum Appliance Enamel Paint in the can. I used a high density foam roller for smooth surfaces.

We added the base cabinet next to the stove. Since I planned on painting the countertops anyway, we bought a countertop at Home Depot and cut it to size. Apparently you cannot have them cut these in the store, so we bought a Circular Saw and followed this tutorial on how to cut the countertops.

After cutting the width to size, you have to iron on the edge pieces.

Then, we installed the countertop to the base. I painted the countertop to match.