Who doesn’t love a good before and after? I know I do!
After watching wayyy too many home makeover shows and feeling pretty confident in our overall handy skills, we decided to embark on a DIY kitchen makeover.
Here‘s where we started:
Not bad! Just not our style. I wanted light and bright!
Our makeover would include:
• painting our existing cabinets
• replacing the backsplash
• new knobs and pulls
• new faucet
Sounds pretty simple, right? We see it done all the time! Everyone knows it’s far more cost effective to just paint your cabinets for a fresh new look.
And so, the day after I told Joey that I was ready to do this, I went to the store and bought a bunch of large Rubbermaid bins that I planned to use to store all of the contents of our cupboards.
We emptied the cupboards, loaded up all of those Rubbermaid bins plus some laundry baskets, and moved everything out of the way to the basement. Joey removed all of the doors and hinges. He labeled them all with painters tape and had a compartment box in which he organized all of the hinges. We taped off the edges and covered the floor with plastic in preparation for a busy weekend of paint stripping ahead!
We started bright and early the next morning. Joey began using paint stripper on the island and we got a rude awakening real quick. The paint stripper was making a mess of our low-quality cabinets. Not a good scenario.
Mission: abort!! Knowing that we had a
LOT of work in front of us and feeling bummed that the paint stripper wasn’t working, we switched gears and decided to sand it all down. We tarped off the kitchen and each began the messy job of sanding the cabinets with electric sanders.
It took us an entire day to sand down the cabinets, and almost a year later I swear that black dust from the paint is STILL settling in our house. Yuck!
The next day, Joey sanded the cabinet doors outside while I cleaned up inside. Then I cleaned again. And again. And again. I spent about 10 hours just cleaning up the mess from the day before.
I was able to get the first coat of primer applied inside that evening. Joey had a great setup out in the garage where he was spraying the cabinet doors. After a couple days, we had 2 coats of primer applied to everything. I really felt like things were moving along! Until.....
....we realized that a yellowish tint was seeping through the primer. We thought that maybe it would cover with paint so Joey applied the paint to the doors. Nope. Discoloration was seeping through. At this point, we had a few different issues happening with the doors.
1. We used the wrong primer.
2. We didn’t sand between coats, and should have.
3. We used the wrong sprayer nozzle.
Sherwin Williams had recommended a water-based primer, which is what we started with. After this failure, I called and talked to someone else who told me that we needed an OIL based primer to block any bleed through. Uggghhhh
Not only was the primer wrong, the texture of the doors was so bad. It was far from smooth, and more like an orange peel. Sanding in between coats would have helped with the texture. After some more online research, I was feeling discouraged thinking we’d have to spend a fortune on a high end paint sprayer until I found a separate detail finish nozzle attachment for our sprayer. Only $35! Worth a shot!
We slapped the new primer over top of the cabinets inside, but had to once again sand down the cabinet doors. It felt like we’d be sanding FOREVER.
After a year of sanding (just kidding, it took about a week’s worth of weeknights though), we were ready to apply the new primer, then paint. The primer we settled on was the Sherwin Williams Extreme Block. For the paint, we used Sherwin Williams Emerald Urethane Enamel in Pure White.
We applied 2 coats of the new primer inside and 2 coats of paint. To apply, I used a paint brush and a mini foam roller on the larger areas to achieve a smoother finish.
On the cabinet doors, we applied 2 coats of the new primer with a sprayer, sanding in between, and then 3 coats of paint thinned with water (probably didn’t need to thin it).
In between paint coats, we began ripping out the backsplash. It didn’t take terribly long and while it looked horrible, the end results weren’t as damaging as I expected.
A few coats of drywall compound and sanding later, our kitchen was beginning to look brighter!
* Note the air fryer on the counter. That little gadget was a lifesaver during our kitchen makeover when we didn’t have use of our appliances!
Oh, and one more thing. While I was painting inside, I was standing on the counter near the sink and lost my footing. I stepped in the sink. I heard a crack. It broke. So that was cool. Joey would get to fix that later. On to backsplash!
When trying to choose a backsplash, I bought a couple different tiles and taped them to a poster board to get an idea of how they’d look in our kitchen against our countertops.
I preferred the white, but actually liked the size of the gray tiles, which were 3”x12” and lucky us, the white came in the larger size!
For cabinet knobs and pulls, we went with the oil-rubbed bronze which basically looks black. The knobs came from Menards, but the only place I could find the right size pulls was online through Home Depot.
Once the painting was finished, it felt SO GOOD to get those doors back on the cabinets!
Back to tiling! Joey amazed me with his tile work skills! Of course, that was after a small splurge on a new wet saw to properly cut the tiles. We opted not to leave gaps between the tiles. That meant we didn’t have to use spacers and it worked perfectly for the distance between the counters and cabinets.
It took a few weeknights, but Joey had finished the tiling, grouted, and applied grout caulk around the edges. Putting those outlet covers back on felt like a world of difference! So close!
Remember when I said I broke the sink? Yeah, it still needed to be fixed. When I stepped in it, it came detached from the counter. We had to re-attach and seal it. At this time, Joey installed the new faucet. Yay! We also found that the garbage disposal was making a weird sound and smoked a little.. so we replaced that too. Joey made a fancy contraption to hold the sink in place while it sealed.
And... just like that, after what seemed like an entire summer, we were done! Or, were we?
Okay, one more thing. I got a new window shade. I wasn’t sure at first but it has grown on me and now I love it!
So, that’s it! Overall, it took us just over a month to complete our project, using up all of our nights and weekends. It’s definitely NOT perfect and we are not professionals by any means, but we were able to update it to match our style and brighten things up.
Are you ready to embark on your kitchen makeover? I hope you learned a little from our mistakes and have a decent idea of what NOT to do! Hint: don’t step in the sink.
Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the official before and after photos!
