Kitchen Cabinet Update

Well THAT was more of a pain in my rump project than I expected.  When we had all the cabinet doors laying out on the driveway, one of our friendly new neighbors came by to check it out.  "I've been wanting to do that to mine", he said.  The deeper we got into the project, the more we kept yelling toward Friendly Neighbor's house, "DON'T DOOOO ITTTTTTT!"  I really thought I'd just be able to sand those dummy cabinets down and just start painting with my paint + primer in one.  Who's the dummy now?  The wood grain was too freakin' smooth, the paint just slid off.  FINE.  We go to the store to get a REAL primer. Happy? Spray primer on, and still have to paint 2 coats on.  I don't like how many steps there are here. And WAITING. Waiting really blows.  DRY! DRY! DRY!

However, they are done.  It took FOUR days but they are finished.  Want to see?  Of course you do!

Cabinets before:

Cabinets After (Covered in dust since we started the floors when this was taken...next post!):

Calm down, the wood we didn't paint won't be seen with our stove, fridge, and baseboards in there.

So we were going to go the all stainless steel look with appliances but since the microwave and stove were already white, and are perfectly fine, I can't bring myself to just replace them on aesthetics alone.  Paying close to $5k just to change everything to stainless?  That's just getting too crazy.  I can live with white appliances and dark cabinets.  I talked myself into it by Googling "white appliances with dark cabinets" to get a feel for how it might look and I didn't mind it. (Yeah, I Google everything.)  It kind of keeps it bright and will match all of the white trim.  I'm going with it.  I hope you are too. Oh you don't want to? Well there is a saying we have in our family:  "You can't see it from YOUR house."

I really think we could have painted these cabinets purple and it would have looked better than before.  Maybe you liked them before, but looking at them makes me do this:   : |     also, this: : /    
Those are faces, by the way, if you're confused or aren't familiar with DIY emoticons...

More dusty cabinets:

Instead of putting a tiled backsplash up there just yet, I'm trying this on for size.  There are damage-free hanging hooks on it just in case I think it sucks later.  On this amazing blog that I love, I saw this idea of putting a full length mirror horizontally behind the counter.  If you love to be (or aspire to be) super duper organized, this woman's blog will blow your mind.  I nearly drool when I see some of the things she does.  It just makes my brain very happy.

That bar area will be great for sweet food and drink buffets at parties, don't you think? ;)  I'm already picturing it with delicious snacks and cheese plates and bounties of fruit and crudites and a cocktail station and---... Droooooool.  I know I say "drool" a lot but I really do drool.  It must be my big teeth.

I really like the color and the way they turned out.  A couple of them may need a little touching up but that will be simple and I can do that later.  I thought these cabinets were a thorn in my side but stay tuned for the most labor intensive project yet: THE FLOORS.

Thanks for reading! :)

We got the keys! Let the games begin!

The waiting is over.  We can now do things like this: 

That's right, honey. You're so mighty. You show that sign who's boss.

We got our keys and within five minutes were ripping out old stinky baseboards and moulding. Everything is so GRIMEY. But I can't worry about that now. We are about to tear the place up anyway. The deep cleaning will happen eventually. 

Here are a few of the place before we started ripping it to shreds today:

Living room view from kitchen

Kitchen view from living room

My office/guest room. Which, we ended up deciding to keep the carpet in here (the one and only room that will have carpet).  It's not in terrible shape and I can get it shampooed. 

Dirty door with dirty hardware.  I'll be getting a new handle. What fabulous/obnoxious color can I paint this door?!

It's pretty overwhelming but I just need to focus on one thing at a time. While dad helped with baseboard removal, I got started on removing all the cabinet doors.

"Oh look, I'm smiling and having the grandest of times! Operation Espresso Cabinets is SO enjoyable!"... 

It was all sunshine and rainbows until I gathered my collection in the garage.

 *Cue my BEST unamused facial expression.

Lawwwwwwd help meh! Can you say "over-freaking-whelming"?!  This wasn't even all of them! Watch out cabinets, I'm comin' for you tomorrow...when the water gets turned back on and I can wipe off all those sticky food stains and handprints. I cant wait to come back and start sanding. Wooooo power tools!

We will also be prepping those dirty walls for painting. We may have to re-spray some texture back on after we scrape that caulking from the chair rail we removed. I can't wait for it all the be one clean color! It will be so much easier and more calming to my peepers.

We are keeping the laminate down while we paint to avoid having to protect the floor.  BUT I did want to lift up a section to see what we're working with.  Because I want to stain the concrete floors, I was really hoping for the concrete to be in good condition. Specifically, NO CARPET GLUE. 

Oh, hi, fake wood floor that doesn't match! Let me just lift some of you up. Show me your goodies. Please no glue, please no glue, please no glue.

YOU. IDIOT.  HI carpet glue! There still might be hope. If we can remove all traces, I'll do the acid stain as planned.  If not, I'm still staining, I'll just have to do a water-base stain to cover it. I'm not doing an overlay (More time and money). We will just have to prep the concrete really well. 

We also started to put together the new living room fan and realized it didn't come with the extension rod and the one on the existing fan did not work. Luckily, good ol' Home Depot opens at 6:00am! Did I mention I am a slave driver  dedicated, hardworking individual? 

Well we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow so I should go to sleep.  If I have any trouble drifting off, I'll just count cabinet doors... Stay tuned for updates! 

New homeowners elated to have just taken on thousands of dollars in debt.