Featured!

My oak kitchen makeover was featured today on Better After! Woohoo! We went from a 90s golden oaktastic kitchen to a crisp white beadboard kitchen--all for under $350!

The Kitchen is Done

Or maybe I should title this post "The kitchen is done and has been for months...I'm just a blog slacker!" Ooops! Life is busy, what can I say?!

At any rate, my kitchen is done and I love it! We started this project in early July and I blogged about it back then. We spent the spring having an addition built onto our family room and while we loved the addition, it made our early 90s oak kitchen look even more dated than it had before. We didn't have extra money to gut the kitchen and start from scratch, so I convinced my very very VERY reluctant husband that we should paint the cabinets white. Then I convinced him that not only should we paint them white, but also add beadboard to dress them up a bit. Then I convinced him that while we were doing this project, we might as well add some trim and make them look a bit more finished.
I did a lot of research before we began this project because I knew my husband was taking a huge leap of faith and I didn't want to let him down...nor did I want to end up with streaky oakish whitish cabinets. I looked at lots and LOTS of blogs and websites, but the place that was most helpful was Infarrantly Creative. Beckie is wonderful and her cabinets are beautiful--and she was absolutely wonderful at answering my many questions!
As I mentioned six months ago (wow, that was a long time ago!) when we started this project, we started with one side of the kitchen first because we knew this wouldn't be a short project! If you want to read about the process of doing the cabinets, go back to that July post. Working mostly on the weekends, it took us three months to finish up the kitchen. It was a long, long process but totally worth it in the end. We love our "new" kitchen! It flows beautifully with our expanded family room, too!

I must also put in a plug for Benjamin Moore semi-gloss paint in Decorator White. I heart this paint. I've never used Benjamin Moore paint before and now I'm 100% a convert. It is gorgeous high quality paint that covers like a dream! LOVE it!! I painted (and yes, I mean me--my husband did the other work, but sanding and painting was my job) the entire kitchen by hand using my Purdy brush (you MUST use a good quality brush) and a can of Benjamin Moore paint. My entire kitchen got three coats of paint and I used up 1/3 of a gallon of paint. Isn't that insane?! I thought it would take 3 gallons and instead I used up 1/3 of a gallon!! My kitchen isn't a palace, but it isn't *that* small!!
Eventually we will change out all of our interior (oak...blech!) doors for white wood and change all of the trim to white as well...but it is a slow process! In the picture below you can see across the hall to our laundry room/powder room (yes, the toilet is adjacent to the dryer...it's lovely...) and see the wood trim and the wood door leading to the garage...that will all be white one of these days!
Ahhh, so pretty! I heart this kitchen makeover! Oh and those are our old laminate countertops. I carefully taped them and was able to sand, prime and paint the oak edges white. They've held up beautifully! The backsplash and the edges of the counters were oak...but not any more!

Wondering what this kitchen makeover cost?

Less than $350!

(It would have been less, but beadboard isn't cheap!)

Cabinet Pulls ~ Decisions, Decisions!

By now I'm guessing you've probably seen yesterday's post about painting my oak kitchen cabinets white. Instead of putting another coat of primer on them, right now I'm obsessing over handles and drawer pulls.

I could go traditional and do bin pulls like these on the drawers...
And knobs like these on the cabinet doors...
Or I could go a bit less traditional and do something more funky like these...
Well, really I would do forks and spoons, not just spoons. I'm not sure I'm funky enough for forks and spoons though...but my children sure would get a kick out of them!

What do you think? And polished chrome or brushed/satin nickel?

Kitchen Cabinets Part I

This is my kitchen...lots of oak and gold handles and oak...and more oak. Did I mention that I don't like oak? Now that we've expanded our family room (yes, I know I haven't posted "final" pictures of that!) and have a such a light and bright space with crisp white woodwork...well, the oak kitchen really doesn't flow with the space.

I've been planning our kitchen re-do for quite awhile, but I wanted to wait until the addition was done. So, now is the time! We spent the three day holiday weekend starting this project. We didn't get as far as I wanted, but we made good progress. I was hoping to get one side (the stove side) of the kitchen done. That didn't happen, but I do like what did happen!
My plan for our kitchen is to put beadboard on all the exposed ends of the cabinets as well as in the flat panels on the cabinet insets. Crown moulding will go on the tops of the cabinets and trim will be added to the bottom edge of the top cabinets. Quarter round trim will go along the base of the cabinets to transition to the hardwood floor. Everything will be sanded and painted a crisp white.
First we removed the cabinet doors and everything in the cabinets on one side of the kitchen. Then I started sanding the cabinets while my husband started cutting beadboard. We clamped up the first big piece of beadboard to see what we thought...and we loved it! Now my husband was beginning to see my vision for the kitchen!
I kept sanding and my husband kept cutting. I sanded all the doors using a random orbital sander as well as sandpaper along the edges. I primed and painted the old hinges with spray paint as we're hoping to reuse them. We attached the beadboard to the cabinet sides and door fronts using Liquid Nails and then my husband used finish nails and a hammer to attach the crown moulding and other trim pieces. Right now the budget doesn't allow for the purchase of a nail gun and compressor, but that sure would have come in handy.
This is my husband's first time cutting crown moulding--I think he did a fantastic job! Oh and take a look at the countertop. We have laminate counters with oak trim (yes, more oak!) that we're trying to save. I taped off the edge and primed it...and it is looking like it will work.
At this point the cabinets have one coat of primer. I'll be priming them again before painting them with some high quality white latex paint that I bought from Benjamin Moore. I'm painting everything with a brush. We have a paint sprayer, but it isn't a very good one because we don't have an air compressor (that whole budget thing again) and I decided that sanding out drips from our cheapo paint sprayer would be a huge pain because of the beadboard. So far the brush is working really well!
The beadboard panels fit perfectly on the flat surfaces of our kitchen cabinets. The faces of the cabinet boxes stick out just a bit on the front--so on the corners of the cabinets the edges aren't even. Does that make sense? Here's a picture where you can see how the beadboard just nestles right in there.
Still a lot (a LOT!) of work to go, but I'm already thrilled with how much better our kitchen is looking. I really and truly love what we're doing to the kitchen! Stay tuned and I'll post more pictures as we continue with the process.


Click the box above to go to A Soft Place to Land and see more projects! Or head over to The Shabby Chic Cottage for more Transformation Thursday projects!