ITS FINALLY DONE!! Man ohh man has this project taken way longer than we anticipated, but were finally done. There is way too much to talk about every aspect of this remodel, basically we wanted a new kitchen but our budget wouldn’t allow for a total gut job, so we opted for a complete face lift. I’ll talk about our struggles and the things we learned along the way.
Our house is old (built in the 50’s) and was previously a rental were guessing. The kitchen cupboards were pretty hammered (miss matched hinges, random screws poking through places, etc.) so they needed a LOT of filling holes and sanding. It wouldn’t be a full face lift without building new fronts, so in all we built 15 new cupboard doors, 9 new drawer faces, 3 blank faces and 9 new drawer boxes. We used soft close 35mm cup hinges on all the doors, and 22” soft close drawer slides for the drawers (these were a bit overkill for our small drawers). Our basement is currently tore apart as were going to repaint/carpet it, so I took advantage of this and made myself a paint booth to spray everything I could.
Many lessons were learned along the way, here are a few that hopefully will help someone else someday. Although we always prime before we paint, we learned the value of getting a GOOD stain blocking primer when painting real wood. (After prime and a coat of paint we were still getting bleed through from the wood). In total we ended up spraying 5 coats on both the boxes and the new doors. Using oak to build something that’s going to be painted is a BAD choice! After prime and paint the open grain of the oak was still showing through a TON, so we had to fill the grain, re-sand and repaint all our doors! Scheduling is KEY, I removed the sink to paint our countertops but didn’t take into consideration I would need the blanks installed before putting in the new sink, and needless to say we were without a kitchen sink for nearly a month. We used Rustoleum countertop paint (enamel type), DON’T sand in between coats and absolutely 100% wait 3 days before applying a second coat. We had issues with it bubbling because we sanded and put a 2nd coat on too soon. We had to wait 3 days for it to cure completely, sand the heck out of it and re-apply paint. It turned out alright though. When drilling hinges for the doors, having lots of drills or drivers totally helped!
This is about all I can think of right now, but I know I missed a bunch, any questions just ask away!
ITS FINALLY DONE!! Man ohh man has this project taken way longer than we anticipated, but were finally done. There is way too much to talk about every aspect of this remodel, basically we wanted a new kitchen but our budget wouldn’t allow for a total gut job, so we opted for a complete face lift. I’ll talk about our struggles and the things we learned along the way. Our house is old (built in the 50’s) and was previously a rental were guessing. The kitchen cupboards were pretty hammered (miss matched hinges, random screws poking through places, etc.) so they needed a LOT of filling holes and sanding. It wouldn’t be a full face lift without building new fronts, so in all we built 15 new cupboard doors, 9 new drawer faces, 3 blank faces and 9 new drawer boxes. We used soft close 35mm cup hinges on all the doors, and 22” soft close drawer slides for the drawers (these were a bit overkill for our small drawers). Our basement is currently tore apart as were going to repaint/carpet it, so I took advantage of this and made myself a paint booth to spray everything I could. Many lessons were learned along the way, here are a few that hopefully will help someone else someday. Although we always prime before we paint, we learned the value of getting a GOOD stain blocking primer when painting real wood. (After prime and a coat of paint we were still getting bleed through from the wood). In total we ended up spraying 5 coats on both the boxes and the new doors. Using oak to build something that’s going to be painted is a BAD choice! After prime and paint the open grain of the oak was still showing through a TON, so we had to fill the grain, re-sand and repaint all our doors! Scheduling is KEY, I removed the sink to paint our countertops but didn’t take into consideration I would need the blanks installed before putting in the new sink, and needless to say we were without a kitchen sink for nearly a month. We used Rustoleum countertop paint (enamel type), DON’T sand in between coats and absolutely 100% wait 3 days before applying a second coat. We had issues with it bubbling because we sanded and put a 2nd coat on too soon. We had to wait 3 days for it to cure completely, sand the heck out of it and re-apply paint. It turned out alright though. When drilling hinges for the doors, having lots of drills or drivers totally helped! This is about all I can think of right now, but I know I missed a bunch, any questions just ask away!
