#DIY Inexpensive Cabinet Updates

We ve been plugging away on the kitchen. and now I can finally show you how we updated our old cabinets by adding trim, paint, and semi-open shelving!

The room was already looking worlds better, thanks to projects like the fresh white paint. wood floors. painting a bright red door. and raising the old header over the sink and adding a new pendant light rugs. But I couldn t wait to get my hands on the dated 50 s cabinetry.

I planned on removing the doors to the cabinet to the right to allow for semi-open shelving for an updated look and easy access to everyday dishes.

New hardware would be fun, but what we had was fine, so I planned to spray paint them all black so they would match each other and coordinate with the other black accents in the room.

Painting is the obvious answer for dated cabinets, but I was worried that the plain, flat-front doors might still look cheap bland, even with a fresh coat of paint. I thought that adding simple trim to the fronts would really dress them up and make them look more expensive than they are.

Adding trim to cabinet doors has obviously been done before. One day I was waiting at the paint counter at Lowe s, there was a bucket of yardsticks, and I was thinking that I should buy wood trim that size because it s exactly the look I had in mind flat, shaker style, and the width of the boards were still small enough for the tiny drawers.

Then it dawned on me that I should just use yardsticks! I came home with a cart full. At just $0.69 a piece, they were much cheaper than plain craft boards the exact same size. All it would take was a quick sanding down with an orbital sander to remove the numbers, right? (Spoiler: nnnnnoootttt.)

So, this is more of a tale of what not to do. But I ll explain anyways. We started this project when my wonderfully giving family came down for a weekend to help us finish up some house projects. While my mom grammy were inside priming away on the cabinet bases

My sisters I were outside tackling the cabinet doors. Alyssa sanded all the doors with an orbital sander, Megan I worked on adding the trim yardstick detail to the fronts. We figured out that you should cut multiples at once to save time ensure perfectly even cuts. I didn t bother with mitered corners because I knew you wouldn t be able to tell after they were sanded, primed, and painted.