One of my LEAST favorite things about refinishing something is SANDING the blasted thing until your elbow is going to fall off. 

When we moved into our house our bathrooms were atrocious (note: they're still atrocious) but I decided I wanted to AT LEAST paint the cabinet vanities until something else could be done to them (i.e. demolished and removed).  When you're doing a SLOW remodel that you pay for as you go, you have to pick and choose what you can and can't live with. I decided I could live with the vanities for a while but ONLY if they got a little makeover. 



Oh the humanity! And yes, that is actually carpet in the bathroom, yikes! The wood on the vanity is actually a laminate composite (aka not high quality wood). I knew sanding this down to the bone wouldn't really benefit me at all but I was also worried about paint "sticking", especially in the bathroom where the humidity is higher. 

Enter BONDING PRIMER. This stuff is like liquid gold. It has some grit in the texture (not so much that you'd really notice) but the texture creates something for the paint to bond to - hence the name!

When I painted my vanity, I removed the doors and left the hinges on but was just careful (kind of) when painting around them. Then I got a sanding block and quickly scuffed the surface of the cabinets. I don't know that this is totally necessary but I guess it made me feel a little better about my efforts. I'm talking, like 30 seconds on each side of the door. 

Once they were all "sanded" I applied the primer. I was careful to make sure the primer went on smoothly. Because there is some grit in the primer, I knew it could make the brush strokes more noticeable. When the primer was dry I painted the cabinets with a lovely color of gray I had chosen. 



Granted, it's not what I would choose to put in my bathroom. I certainly wouldn't call this a remodel. However, it's an update I can live with until I am able to make my bathroom everything I've ever dreamed of. 

One of these days I'll have to write a blog post about the horrible-ness that is my bathroom. It's seriously AWFUL.

SO MANY people go to tremendous effort and money to makeover their kitchen only to fall short on the final few details. The finishing touches are SO important! You can do everything else right and if you get these wrong you kitchen just falls short.

Forgive my pictures. When I was taking pictures I hadn't planned on doing this blog so some of the pictures don't match SUPER well with the topic. This is when I was installing the backsplash myself (thanks YouTube) but it perfectly illustrates the existing  solid wood, alder cabinet frames that we painted white - sans the doors.

You're FINALLY ready to paint. Your cabinets are where you want them, you've picked a color and you're ready. 

Just HOW are you going to paint your cabinets? Are you going to use a brush, roller or paint sprayer? Did you sand your cabinets if there was an existing paint or stain? Are you going to prime them first? Dang it that you can't just slap some paint on the fronts and call it good. Well, you can but "good" probably isn't what you'll be calling it if you do that.

First things first. 

The kind of treatment your cabinets need depends on what kind of cabinets you have. Before you sand or paint, determine what kind of cabinet doors you have. Here are just a few examples of cabinet door types...

Solid wood - just as the term implies, it's solid homogeneous wood, all the way through. The only variation might be boards or panels that are several pieces of solid wood joined together.

Particle board - an engineered wood product that's made from wood chips and particles that are combined with an adhesive and fused together into boards and panels. Particle board makes up a large percentage of the materials used in today's cabinetry, from the panels that make up the boxes to shelving.

Medium density fiberboard (MDF) - another engineered wood product that's made up of wood fibers. The fibers are combined with an adhesive under pressure and formed into boards and panels. MDF has a finer texture than particle board and is denser and heavier than particle board. It's used in cabinet doors, shelves and cabinet boxes.

Plywood - yet another engineered wood product but one that's probably most familiar to people. It's made up of thin wood "plies" or layers of wood that are glued together in a sandwich form. Usually the plies are oriented with their grain direction at varying angles with respect to each other to give the board or panel more rigidity and stability. Plywood is used for shelving, doors and cabinet boxes.

Plastic laminate - this is virtually the same material that's used on laminate countertops although it's usually thinner when used on cabinets. It's basically a plastic product, formed by fusing paper and plastic resin together under heat and pressure. Laminate's used for covering cabinet boxes and/or doors to provide a easily-cleaned surface.
Melamine - another plastic-based product that's also used to cover cabinet surfaces. It's a popular material for covering particle board panels that are used in making cabinet boxes. One type of construction you may see involves cabinet boxes made with melamine and wood veneer over particle board. The melamine is on the inside part of the cabinet and the wood veneer is on the outside of the cabinet box. 
Thermofoil - a thin vinyl film that's used to cover cabinet boxes, doors and drawer fronts. The vinyl usually starts as a rigid film that's then heated and formed over the substrate material (such as cabinet door made from MDF). You'll usually encounter the term "thermofoil cabinets" which implies cabinets that are covered with the thermofoil material (the base material will usually be one of the engineered wood products).


The good news here is that most people probably have doors that can be sanded and painted. I would have you use CAUTION if your doors are made with plastic laminate, melamine or thermofoil as those materials won't take to paint very well.  There could be a primer that will allow those materials to accept paint but you'd need to ask a painting professional their advice. 

The other bit of good news is that 99% of cabinet "boxes" will be framed with solid wood and are perfect for priming and painting or staining. 


Sanding and Priming

Primers and paint have come a long way in recent years.  In days of yore you'd have to thoroughly sand each cabinet door and frame before even considering putting paint and primer on them. While I do think sanding a little bit is a good idea, it is no longer necessary to get your doors naked. 

If your existing doors have been stained or glazed, I suggest a primer with a stain blocker (Kilz for example). If you just put paint onto the cabinets there is a good chance that in not too many years to come the stain or glaze will begin to seep through the paint and all your work will have been for naught.  



Let me just plug refacing your doors here again. It's the BEST idea in all the land!  Just think, you'll save yourself the laborious steps of sanding and priming.


Painting method

In a perfect world you would be able to use a paint sprayer to prime and paint your doors and frames. This is VERY labor intensive in itself because unless you are installing all new cabinets and can paint them off site, you're going to need to "tent" your room. You'd need to cover your floors with paper or plastic and tape everything down. You'll also need to cover all of your walls and lastly, use plastic to make a tent in the room where you're using the paint sprayer. You also need to be sure that everything is securely taped and weighted down because the paint sprayer uses air - which blows everything to high heaven. 

Because this is so labor intensive I suggest hand painting your cabinet frames (you won't see much of those anyway) and using a paint sprayer for the doors.

In our case, we have an unfinished basement and my husband was able to set up a paint room in the basement - this could also be done in a garage. He simply stapled some plastic sheeting to the ceiling and walls and taped paper onto the floor and set up the sprayer in the "paint room". 




If all of that isn't feasible, brushing or rolling the paint onto the doors is the only option left. To avoid having brush lines, consider thinning your paint just slightly and adding a few more coats. The effect will be a more smooth and uniform look. Also, to achieve a nice finish on the cabinets and avoid paintbrush streaks, you'll want to LIGHTLY sand the doors after the primer and in between each coat of paint.  Use the finest grit sandpaper you can get and quickly and lightly sand each door. 

You're trying to avoid this ugly mess by thinning your paint and sanding in between each and every coat.

Once all of your beautiful doors are finally painted, consider putting on a few coats of polyurethane or even better, polyacrylic (polyacrylic doesn't yellow like polyurethane does). If you're thinking shiny, glossy clear coating, think again. They make matte finish coatings that will save your paint, make your cabinets easier to clean and hold up over time. 


Up Next: the finishing touches




A big thanks to www.home-style-choices.com for some of the content on cabinet construction Please visit them for an in depth explanation on total cabinet construction. 

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.

White cabinets are all the rage these days. You have oak or alder cabinets so you're going to slap a coat of white paint on them and everything will be dandy, right?

Not so fast. 

There are SO MANY things to consider when it comes to a kitchen makeover or remodel. We've all heard the concept of good, better, best. While just painting your cabinets might be a GOOD idea, you might get a BETTER result by spending just a few more hundred dollars and thinking outside the box just a little. 

The very FIRST thing you should do is dream big. Think about the things you would do if money were no object. Would you add cabinets? Move appliances? Change countertops? Add additional lighting? Change hardware? 

I suggest writing out a list of everything you'd want in your wildest dreams. Also, make a rough sketch of how it will look. DREAM BIG people! 

You don't need to be an architect or even an artist to do this.  If you can draw a box, you can make a sketch of what you want. 

Before our kitchen ever materialized, these are the drawings we sketched out.  My husband later added heights and dimensions but this is where it all began.

Once you've written everything you want, decide which things are totally impractical due to floorplan, budget, space and circumstance. For example, I would LOVE a breakfast nook just off my kitchen.  I have a bay window/door but it hardly qualifies as a nook, more like a notch. Part of my dream big plans included a nook. To do this, we would have had to change the whole exterior of the house, add a new roof, move windows and change the flooring all for a 50 square foot increase. The cost vs value just wasn't there - so we nixed it. 

The question is: Is merely painting your cabinets white (or any color for that matter) going to help you achieve any of the changes on your DREAM BIG list?

If the answer is no, then you probably have some work to do before paint ever meets your cabinets. I know people think that they'll just paint their cabinets until they can get what they really want - and that's fine, I guess.  But why not start on what it is that you really want? You probably won't get an instant makeover.  I didn't. I got a nearly 4 year project but the 4 years passed regardless and now I have almost everything on the list of things I really wanted. 

I KNEW I wanted to move the fridge and the microwave. We moved a bank of cabinets where the fridge was going to go and had an electrician and plumber come rewire everything and voila, it was moved.  I believe the plumber and electrician cost around $250 TOTAL.

We moved the bank of cabinets we took out to accommodate the fridge over to where the fridge used to be.

I knew I wanted the cabinets extended up to the ceiling so we took the cabinets that were above the fridge and moved them to the top of the existing cabinets.

I can't tell you for how many months I lived with my kitchen like this. I'd like to pay honorable mention to the section of cabinets that don't have a countertop. Also the fact that I didn't have a microwave for WEEKS, oh and the flooring and the cabinets still look SO AWESOME together.

Up next: painted white PART 2: moved and measured.

First, let me start off by saying that my intention is never to criticize what choices someone has made in their home.  When I show examples of what NOT to do it is in the hopes of providing a different idea that might look better in the long run. That said, the MOST IMPORTANT part in any design project is if YOU like it. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks so long as YOU are happy.

Maybe it's because I have 3 daughters that I often think about pink. More than likely though, it's because SO OFTEN people get it SO wrong. In all fairness, pink is a really hard color to get right - as far as painting walls goes.

Pink is such an overbearing color when it is painted on walls. Once it's up, color and saturation intensifies ten fold. For this reason I suggest never painting a wall solid pink. If you feel you MUST paint a wall pink, get a very very very VERY light tone OR break it up by painting stripes or pairing it with wainscoting or hardie board.

If you're trying to incorporate pink into a room, I suggest accessorizing with artwork, blankets, draperies, pillows, bedspreads, etc. The result will still be PINK but the outcome will look MUCH better!

Some of the most difficult colors to pick are neutrals, in my opinion. The reason is that unless you're looking at one of the true primary colors (red, yellow and blue), every color has an undertone. Undertones are often hidden in the base color and can be very difficult to detect.

Beige often has undertones that are yellow, green, red and orange. Gray can have undertones of blue, green and often purple. When you see a color scheme that just doesn't work, it is probably because the undertones are "off". 

One very basic and easy way to identify undertones is to compare it to the primary colors. For example, if you are thinking of painting your room a hue of blue, the best way to detect the undertones would be to compare it to true blue. 

I digress. What we really want to talk about it WHITE! As with any neutral, white has undertones, too but they are super sneaky. Often times, white pulls a lot of blue or a lot of yellow. 

To combat this problem, people will decide to get a true white paint. This is the wrong approach. You'll need to paint many more coats of true white paint to get the depth and coverage you're hoping for - and chances are, it will still pull some of the surrounding colors. 

The BEST WAY to combat this is to get a white paint with black in it - yes BLACK.  I'm not talking about getting a gray paint (because black+white=gray, right?). I just mean that you'll want to get a formula that has a minimal amount of black. Or, if you decide to go get a true white, have the paint mixer add around 10 drops of black to a 1 gallon can before shaking it. You won't notice ANY difference in the color but you'll enjoy a depth of color and coverage that you won't get without it. It will also reduce the color variance of the white and the colors it pulls. Trust me on this one! 



Let's practice identifying undertones (this will be a little tricky because all computer screens are calibrated a little differently but you'll get the idea)...





Can you tell which swatch has undertones red and which has yellow?

When you decide to remodel as you go, patience is a necessity. Well, patience and the ability to look into the future. When I picked the flooring for our house I knew it would look SO HIDEOUS with our existing cabinetry and woodwork - but I tried to see the big picture.  I also knew when I bought the $10 pendant lights from Lowe's that they were stupid and ugly but that SOME DAY I would get exactly what I wanted, I just needed place holders to last until I got those.  And so it was with nearly every single thing in our main living area.  

If you plan to remodel piece by piece you definitely need to have a big picture mentality. You also need to choose things with staying power and not necessarily the most popular or trendy fad of the hour. A lot of people assume you can't "gut" a house unless you do it all at once. I am living proof that you can. 

While living in unfinished "chaos" is definitely the biggest draw back, there are some definite up sides to the 'do it slowly' method.

1. You get a feel for the space. I always say that you don't know what you want until you've lived and moved in a space.  For me that was TOTALLY true. We ended up moving our fridge to a much better location and I love it! I don't think if we had made all the changes immediately when we moved in that I would have known that I hated where the fridge was and that it would bug me forever. 
2. You're not under the gun to "just pick something" because it needs to get done.  You have time to really think about what you want - to bring it home, to live with it, to make sure you REALLY like it. 
3. For me, there were things I knew I wanted to spend a little more money on and make it look really nice and hopefully last forever. When you remodel everything at once you have to cut some corners and shave the price on some things (well, most of us "regular" people do anyway).  Doing it slowly means that you can save up for what you really want most. 

There are still a TON of things that need to happen with this room (namely wall decor) but I need to address one mistake that most people make when it comes to their draperies. Often I walk into a house and see that people have hung their curtains just inches above the top of the window. Doing this automatically lowers your line of sight and cuts the room in half. There is such a thing as hanging draperies too high but I would rather have someone err on the side of too high than too low. Also if you've ever priced out 120"+ curtains you know how expensive they can be. For these curtains, I just bought 4 drapery panels (white from Ikea and teal from Target) and sewed them together. I used the bottom of the teal curtains and the full length of the IKEA ones. Literally, all I had to do was sew a straight line. ANYONE can do that. To make it a little more interesting I added that strip in the middle from the teal curtains - so I guess you could say I had to sew 4 straight lines. I think the total price for both panels was right around $85.

I actually think the curtains in the AFTER shot are hung too high.  I probably would have lowered them about 4" from the ceiling - but as I said before, I'd rather curtains be too high than too low.

Another aesthetic component with draperies is piling.  The "pile" of the curtains basically means how much of the drapery hits the floor. This is a personal preference. In my case I prefer a modest amount to bunch on the floor (as seen in the picture of my curtains at the top). Some people prefer no piling while others, massive amounts. The ONE THING you're not allowed to do is leave the curtain too short.  THE CURTAINS MUST at least TOUCH THE FLOOR!

I have a whole bunch of before and after pictures. I always think it's fun to look at the before and after.  While they're fun to compare, what you DON'T see is the 4 YEARS in between. That is what the blog is about - all the in between stuff that got us from before to after. 

One of the first things we did when we moved into our new house was paint. The walls and the ceilings were all the same color.  If you have a contractor grade house and didn't spring for the 3 tone paint upgrade - chances are, yours are too. 

I am pretty passionate about paint. Several of my interior design classes were about paint, color, theory, etc. and those were my FAVORITE classes! There is so much that goes into picking a paint color. More on color and paint and light and the whole wonderful mess in later posts though.

Here is where I admit one of the mistakes I made when I picked out our paint. When we moved in the paint on the walls was orange - or some not so lovely shade of said color. I knew I wanted a warm gray color and when I slapped them on the wall both seemed fine and pretty gray. Well, wouldn't you know it, color+light are a funny thing and once the whole house was painted it seemed less gray than it had before.

The mistake I made was NOT having a white base to compare it to.  I was comparing the paint against the existing orange paint.  Naturally, any paint with even a hint of gray is going to look fine (or at least better because it's hard not to look better than orange). 




Just a few TIPS for choosing a BASE PAINT:
1. Make sure you have a neutral playing field. Unless you're slapping paint up on freshly primed walls, you are going to have some interference with an existing color. To remedy this, paint a large area of the wall with white paint and THEN put your various paint colors on that.

2. Make sure you place your paint sample at different heights on the wall.  The paint I chose is VERY gray near the floor but gets more beige near the ceiling.  There are many different reasons for this (which we will discuss later) but be sure you like the paint up high and down low. 

3. Paint each paint sample on walls with a different exposure. For example, a paint color will look different on a Northern exposed wall than it will on a Southern exposed wall. The quality and scope of the light changes during the day and will look different depending on the wall(s) it's on.  I'm not suggesting that you paint different exposures with different paints (please don't), I'm just suggesting that you find a paint you like equally in different exposures. 

There is SO MUCH to be said on color and paint. I could go on for days #paintfordays but we'll start there. 

In 2012 my family and I decided to move on a whim. We found a wonderful house with wonderful bones but the inside needed a little (okay, a lot) of help. 

It wasn't that the things in the house were of poor quality it was just that EVERYTHING was outdated. Think 1976 and you're in the right decade. Side note, the house was built in 2007.

What fortune! What luck! My husband put himself through college working in a cabinet mill and has always been a really handy guy - he can fix or build ANYTHING. For my part, I went to school for Interior Design and afterward worked in an architectural firm. This was going to be our dream remodel project. 

Except for ONE THING.  We're broke and I'm a cheap-o.  

Okay, we're not really broke.  My husband has an excellent job as an engineer and I am an unpaid domestic goddess. The reality is though, that neither of us wanted to go in to debt to make any changes and do this remodel so we decided to do it slowly and pay for things as we went. 

Now, nearly 4 years later, we have some of the things on our list crossed off.  Some still awaiting completion and others still waiting to get done. Some of the things we've been living with are down right embarrassing and others have been manageable - aside from trying my aesthetic patience. 

Join me on our remodel journey, won't you.  I promise that I won't and haven't gotten everything right. There are already things I would change and other things I can't believe I was lucky enough to stumble across and get it right. I'll also let you know how we did things, where we got the items we have and how to avoid some of the pitfalls we've run across. In short, I'll try to impart some knowledge.  Take that for the two cents it's worth!