Reveal: Kitchen Cabinets Makeover
Hey y’all – we’re finally back! After 8 super grueling weeks pushing to get our guest bathroom completely renovated from top to bottom during the Spring ‘22 One Room Challenge, I accidentally/unintentionally took a break from the blog and social media. It wasn’t really planned, but it was just one of those things where I kept feeling the mental need to wait another day, and another day, and another to get back to it … and before you know it, it’s a completely different season, or year!! Then we had a major life-changing thing happen which really shifted our focus…
where we’ve been
It definitely doesn’t mean my creative brain stopped or my will to do projects ended – it actually got even worse (better? stronger? crazier?), and I actually had still been doing some smaller things around the house since completing the bathroom – like getting around to painting my kitchen cabinets (once we finally were able to find the paint from the COVID-related paint shortage!) and a new unplanned project of refinishing a beautiful exterior door I found on Facebook Marketplace and couldn’t stop thinking about. But very long story short, since all of that and the best of intentions to share it all in a timely manner I actually hurt my back at the beginning of October 2022 and was trying all sorts of things for months to fix it and then in April of 2023 Nick was diagnosed with a rare type of leukemia out of nowhere, so all of these projects that are in various stages of completion – some almost done and ready to share – have just been hanging out in the ether unfinished, driving us absolutely nuts. For instance, for the beautiful unexpected front door project … I’ve been in the stripping-off-layers-of-paint phase for what feels like forever, but don’t worry – I plan on sharing that project, too at some point when I can get back to it. In the meantime, it and other projects, sit in the garage collecting dust.
Over the past year, I’ve debated how much I wanted to open up and get into sharing about our life and non-projects, but thought y’all were owed an explanation on us being M.I.A. for so long. If you’d like to learn more on what’s been going on with us regarding our diagnosis and treatment, etc. you can find that here, though again, life happened and the updates took a back seat. You should know as of today Nick is doing great! He’s in remission, handling the donor cells well and is back to work. We’re still doing some maintenance chemo, something that’s planned monthly for a year post-transplant, as a precaution, but all things considered we are very lucky and grateful to have such an amazing medical team and support system.
Needless to say it’s been kind of a lot and between life. Not only Nick’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment, but we also unexpectedly lost our dog, Zeus, to cancer after a seizure we learned was caused by a brain tumor days before our stem cell/bone marrow transplant. Then, months later we rescued our puppy, Juno, and then three weeks later lost her to a completely unknowable freak genetic and unsurvivable kidney malformation. All of that heartbreak and stress and being so incredibly busy with a million and one other things + the fact that Nick hasn’t been able to be around construction for a bit while he’s immunocompromised, projects have slowed down around here.
On a more positive note, we’ve since rescued another puppy – a “black lab mix” we named Guinness that we found out through DNA testing is all mix and no lab, HA! He’s actually a mostly black german shepherd mix who’s now 7 months old and already weighs more than 65 pounds.
I can’t believe we’re already a year out from the stem cell/bone marrow transplant – time has been both ridiculously slow and incredibly fast since our last Spring ‘22 One Room Challenge post. We’re hoping things will continue going smoothly on the medical front and this will be a great time to finally get back to sharing older projects, planning new projects and reconnecting with you all.
Thank you
…to those of you who have continued to comment on previous posts – your encouraging comments have really meant a lot and I apologize for being slow to respond to some of you. I hope y’all will all understand now with everything that’s been going on, but I wanted to let you know it’s been nice and encouraging to have a bit of normalcy every now and again, and see how we’ve helped and inspired you.
Ok, so let’s look at what you came here for…
our kitchen cabinet makeover
Heading into this phase of the project we had already built our dining room bar cabinet and extended the height of our kitchen cabinets with a built-in wine rack made of wood scraps. This left us with a two-tone Franken-cabinet situation that had been plaguing me for months since we painted the new cabinet additions.
The view of our kitchen from the sink area in March 2022 – after the built-in wine rack and before we painted all of the medium gray cabinets dark green to match
The view of out kitchen from the dining room in March 2022 – after the built-in wine rack and before we painted all of the medium gray cabinets dark green to match
What I’ve done since you last saw our kitchen:
Painted the medium gray cabinets (done back in 2012 right before we moved in) a moody green for a cohesive look
Added brass hardware, which included countersinking pulls into the drawer fronts
Customized the sides of the lower cabinets to make them feel a little more special and stylish (on the cheap!)
Put some love into the area surrounding the refrigerator so it looks more finished next to the rest of the cabinetry
Added fun (and protective) flair to the inside of each drawer
Made a custom organizer in our cutlery/silverware drawer
Installed metal pull-out storage organizers under the sink to keep everything corralled
We’ll cover all of the how-to’s and details in separate posts to keep everything from getting too crazy long here, and the shopping list for what you see here is at the end of this post. So for now, enjoy some good before and afters/currents!
The view of our kitchen from the sink area now, in June 2024 – with all of the kitchen cabinets painted dark green (Sherwin Williams Jasper) and with new brass hardware installed
Detail view of the cabinets and wine rack around our refrigerator area now, in June 2024 – with all of the kitchen cabinets painted dark green (Sherwin Williams Jasper) and with new brass hardware installed
Detail view of the upper cabinet and open reclaimed wood shelf styled for our coffee bar to the right of our refrigerator now, in June 2024 – with all of the kitchen cabinets painted dark green (Sherwin Williams Jasper) and with new brass hardware installed
The view of our kitchen over the upper countertop right of the sink area now, in June 2024 – with all of the kitchen cabinets painted dark green (Sherwin Williams Jasper) and with new brass hardware installed
Detail view of the lower cabinets in the corner to the right of our refrigerator area now, in June 2024 – with all of the kitchen cabinets painted dark green (Sherwin Williams Jasper) and with new brass hardware installed
The view of our kitchen over the upper countertop left of the sink area now, in June 2024 – with all of the kitchen cabinets painted dark green (Sherwin Williams Jasper) and with new brass hardware installed
View of the upper cabinet and open reclaimed wood shelf to the right of our stove where it meets the lefthand dining room bar column now, in June 2024 – with all of the kitchen cabinets painted dark green (Sherwin Williams Jasper) and with new brass hardware installed
View of the upper cabinet and open wood shelf above our stove now, in June 2024 – with all of the kitchen cabinets painted dark green (Sherwin Williams Jasper) and with new brass hardware installed
View of the lower cabinets to the left of our stove now, in June 2024 – with all of the kitchen cabinets painted dark green (Sherwin Williams Jasper) and with new brass hardware installed
Before vs. now (2024):
The view of our kitchen from the dining room in 2012, before we moved in
The view of our kitchen from the dining room in 2024, now
And because I can’t resist – here’s a photo of baby 11-month-old Guinness in our kitchen this January, just four days at his new home!
Our at-the-time 11-week-old puppy, Guinness, in our kitchen as seen from the dining room in January 2024
Kitchen Details
Detail of the interior of our utensil drawer, with custom wood utensil organizer and yellow, black and white floral drawer liner
Detail of a dark green drawer front with inset brass campaign-style pull
Detail of the interior of our dark green drawers, with yellow, black and white floral drawer liner
Detail of the metal pull out storage organizer under the left side of the lower sink cabinet
Detail of the metal pull out storage organizers under the left and right sides of the lower sink cabinet
Kitchen makeover shopping list
Paint
Color: Sherwin Williams Jasper (SW 6216)
Paint: Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel in semi-gloss finish
Brush: I like a short-handled 2” brush like this one because I can get really nice control for cutting in, etc. without hitting everything with a long handle, perfect for a tight space like inside of cabinets.
Brass hardware
I’ll cover the DIY hardware details in a separate post since it involves sinking the recessed pulls into the faces of the drawers and using different size cabinet door pulls.
Brushed brass door pulls: We used both the 3.78” (most doors) and the T-bar 2” (short doors above fridge and stove)
Recessed drawer pulls: Satin brass, 1-3/4” x 4”
Brass shelf pins
Brass shelf pins: We used the 6.35 mm size, but they also come in different sizes and styles that we tried because we weren’t sure what we had: 5mm | Assorted sizes and colors
Shelf liner
Pull out organizers
Cookie sheets + cutting boards pull-out organizer*
*Not pictured in this post
Under sink pull-out organizers
Left side double-level organizer
(Note: our exact one is no longer available, but this one is very similar with the same dimensions)
DIY custom cutlery drawer divider
This one was custom (I’ll cover this surprisingly simple DIY build in a how-to post coming up), but I used:
1/4 x 3” poplar boards (which are actually 1/4” x 2-1/2” in size)
Wood glue
Danish oil, in the color: Natural
Coming up I’ll share exactly how I added our new brass hardware shown here in a more detailed tutorial – it involved a bit more than just a straight hardware swap out since the sizes and styles were completely different – as well as how I built our custom divider for our silverware drawer. And even though this is already a dramatic update, I might also be planning to add a little something extra for form and function to really make this space feel special … but haven’t officially decided yet. Stay tuned!
