painted white PART 2 - adding and moving
4:40 PM
Ok so you have your ideal kitchen all drawn up and ready to go. Now all you need is a handy husband and $20,000 right? If you have both of those things, good on ya, get to work. If you don't have one or both of those things, do not despair, you can still have a lovely kitchen.
If you've decided to move or add cabinets you'll need to decide what cabinets you'll need, where they're going and how to measure for them. Thanks to the people at Bargain Outlet for their tutorial on measuring for new cabinets. http://bargain-outlets.com/focus-post/how-measure-your-kitchen-new-cabinets
A few tips on adding/moving cabinets...
- the most expensive option will be to have a cabinet professional build and install any new cabinets you want to add/move. This is certainly not a bad idea - just the most expensive. If you have no resources and feel you can't add or move cabinets on your own you can ask the cabinet maker the price difference if you paint/stain the cabinets yourself. In some cases the cost might not be worth the effort but in others, it might.
- If your cabinet profile is outdated, painting them is only going to put lipstick on a pig, so to speak. Consider refacing your cabinets. In my opinion, this is the BEST bang for your buck. This is what we did and I'm thrilled. More on this in a minute
- If you want to add cabinets, consider buying used cabinet bases or uppers. If you're going to paint them anyway, it really doesn't matter what they look like - ESPECIALLY if you're going to reface them. Check your classified ads, I think you'll be surprised at how many people are selling cabinets. If you're not going to reface the cabinets, you'll need to make sure the door profiles match.
- Home Depot and Lowe's sell unfinished cabinets of all sizes and profiles. A standard base cabinet with drawers will run you around $100-150. If you only need to add a few, this is a really cost effective way upgrade your kitchen - even if you end up needing to get a new door profile.
- If you feel comfortable buying cabinets but not hanging them, call a local cabinet professional or handy man and ask how much they'll charge to simply hang the cabinets you buy.
Door styles and profiles...
There are zillions of different styles and profiles and each cabinet shop will likely have their own names for their profiles but if you have the general idea of what the style is called you can narrow your search.
Refacing cabinets (aka the BEST idea in all the land)...
We decided to use all of our existing cabinet bases and uppers and get all new doors (reface). By the time we added in the additional upper, upper cabinets and added a few small ones here and there, we needed 41 doors. I called around to a few local cabinet mills, asked if they made unfinished cabinet doors only and found a couple. I sent in my cabinet door measurements and they sent me bids. The cabinet place we ended up using charged us $1,100 for 41 unfinished cabinet doors. Not bad when you consider that changed the ENTIRE look of our kitchen!
As I've mentioned before, the more you do yourself the LESS money you have to spend. Some projects seem so daunting - and some. However, some things that I thought seemed so difficult were really pretty easy thanks to youtube. With the assistance of youtube I have done the following things: installed a trailer hitch on my car, rewired my car, replaced my own car stereo (are we starting to see that I need a lot of mentoring when it comes to my car), tiled my own back splash, installed my own fireplace and made roman shades - just to name a FEW.
Decide what you can realistically do on your own and go shopping. Start calling for bids. Have your friends over, get their ideas. Maybe you have a talent and can trade people for their labor. Again, THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.
Up NEXT: painting your cabinets
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