#Refinishing Kitchen Cabinets - A Beautiful Mess

Hi, guys! It s Mandi here—so excited to share this first peek into our newly remodeled kitchen! When we were house hunting three years ago, it was difficult to find a home in our price range that had a large kitchen and dining room, but that was number one on my shopping list. We ended up finding just the home—a small, mid-century ranch with a good portion of its square footage dedicated to making food and eating it. Perfect for our modern family! Of course, I didn t really like anything about the kitchen besides its layout, and for a while it was really difficult for me to enjoy being in there without wishing it was different. We didn t have the money for a renovation, but that didn t stop me from dreaming about it with every pancake I flipped!

Quite frankly, it wasn t until I faced an unexpected battle with cancer that my priorities completely shifted, and I learned to develop blind spots towards the areas in my home I had wanted to change and simply focus on enjoying the people in our home instead. Now that we finally have a chance to make changes in our home, we ve been able to think long and hard about each decision and go into the project with a healthy attitude, understanding that this renovation is a fun thing we get to do to make our home prettier, but it s the food and fellowship that really makes our kitchen a wonderful place to be.

The biggest change our kitchen underwent was the refinishing of the cabinets. I can t believe how different this space feels and the amount of light that bounces around in there now! It s like a whole new kitchen!

If you ve been itching for a change in your own kitchen, I d wager that painting your cabinets could give you that fresh face you want, without the hefty cost of all new fixtures. It was a little scary, in the throws of the renovation, when the cabinets had been ripped off the wall, the countertop was missing, and the walls needed patched. Maybe it was just living with a busy husband, active toddler, and no sink or stove. But I think a little part of the scary factor was the fact that this was such a BIG job, and I was having commitment issues. Did I choose the right colors? Would I miss the wood cabinets? Should we have just sprung for new cabinets after all?

Now that I m looking at these before and after photos, I can t believe I even questioned refinishing our cabinets! We saved so much money by keeping our current cabinetry, but the refinishing definitely breathed new life into our entire kitchen. Check out our process below, and I ll share some tips too!

Our simple plywood cabinets were presumably constructed by the previous owner, judging by the not-so-amazing quality of the construction. As we began taking off the sticky doors, I wondered if we were making a mistake in putting time and money into these chipped and crooked cabinets. But working on a tight budget, and not wanting to over-improve our home for the neighborhood, I decided to stick with the plan of painting them. It would just require quite a bit of attention and wood filler. Did I mention lots of wood filler? Yeah. We used two tubs of wood filler for this whole job. More than I ve ever used in my entire life.

Selecting a Paint Finish

I knew that I wanted a darker color on the bottom and white on the top of my cabinets, because I liked the interest that the difference in color adds to a space and was really itching to bring more light into our dreary kitchen. But I wasn t sure what kind of paint to get. I was worried about getting a high-gloss paint because of brush strokes showing more easily with the reflected light, but I liked the idea of the cabinets being really easy to wipe clean with a semi-gloss finish. Plus, I ll take all the reflected light I can get.

In the end, I decided to get Benjamin Moore s ADVANCE paint because it s so thick and settles nicely after brushing, so that brush strokes become less noticeable than they would be with a lower quality paint. Because we were spray painting the doors, and there would be no brush or roller texture to be seen on them, I had no qualms about getting a semi-gloss paint finish. I can attest to the fact that they re very easy to wipe clean, though I ll warn you that fingerprints show up so easily, so we re cautious about closing the doors using the knobs instead of our hands.

The top cabinets have untinted white paint, and the lower cabinets have Benjamin Moore s Black Panther, which is like a dark charcoal gray, but not quite black. I decided having no color on the cabinets would age the best and work with any color scheme in the future. Sure, yellow was tempting, but I m glad I kept it safe with the Black Panther! And the white—Oh, it s so bright and beautiful!

Something that I didn t do in our project, that I wish I would have, was to create a timeline. We had friends and family help out at times, and when they were contributing their own tools to the project, it was a little frustrating waiting days to pick up where we left off because of waiting for their availability. You know the old saying, beggars can t be choosers? It s so true! But I think that my own sanity would have benefited from creating a schedule for work days and what we had planned to accomplish. Our entire kitchen was ripped apart, so in between work days, it was hard to do anything in our home, much less eat anything. If we had consulted with helpers to see their availability and coordinated with them to create a schedule, I m sure I would have had a much better time with the process, looking at a schedule and seeing an end in sight, and also knowing for sure that people knew which days they were going to be coming over to help, and I could count on it.

Here s how we ordered each aspect of the cabinet refinishing:

Day One: Empty cabinets and drawers and organize contents into boxes and onto folding tables throughout the house—This took one evening with two people.

Day Two: Take down upper cabinets (optional), remove cabinet doors and drawers, remove hardware, sand away the previous finish, fill holes and chips with wood filler, let wood filler dry, sand down again, do another coat of wood filler, then sand again until smooth—This took one long afternoon and late night with three people.

Day Three: Taping off the drawer sides and insides, spray painting with primer, wet sanding the primer, and adding another coat of primer to all doors and drawers—This took one morning and afternoon with two people.

Day Four: Taping off the inside of the lower cabinets, priming the cabinet faces with two coats of primer, and painting with two coats of paint—This took one evening and late into the night with two people, primarily waiting for paint to dry between coats.*

Day Five: Spray painting two coats of paint on all the doors and drawers and moving inside the garage to dry on wax paper—This took one morning and afternoon with two people.

Day Six: Hanging upper cabinets and adding new hardware to doors and drawers—This took one evening with three people.

Day Seven: Hanging doors with new hinges—This took one evening with two people. We also had old latches to add inside the cabinet doors.

*It s important to allow one week after painting before hanging doors and replacing drawers. If you use them before the paint has cured, I guarantee you will have something stick to the paint and then pull it away, ruining your fresh paint job!

Materials:

-1 gallon tinted primer (to use under dark paint)

-1 gallon regular primer

-1 gallon untinted, white semi-gloss paint (Benjamin Moore s ADVANCE)

-1 gallon Benjamin Moore s ADVANCE Black Panther semi-gloss paint

-sandpaper—120 grit, 180 grit, and 400 grit wet/dry