[Article] Article: home part two: kitchin fixins

Welcome to another episdoe of This Mediocre House
with your useless host, fly​

So April and I have lived in this house for over five years. In that time, she has slapped on quite a bit of paint. We've filled it with lots of shit. And we've shit and banged on every surface in the place. But outside of that, we haven't really *done* anything to it. That's changing.

In Part One, we addressed some of the issues in our closet. Namely the crappy, contractor carpet and the nasty, marred up, white walls. We put in new flooring, baseboards, lights, and a fresh coat of paint. The results looked pretty good.

Fresh off the excitement from that project, we embarked on another. The kitchen. Unfortunately, our budget does not include the ability to go out and buy fancy new cabinets. So for now, we're just going to freshen them up. This calls for reinforcements. My mom does painting, interior decorating, and all sorts of home shit. Since she was only a $200 flight away, it seemed like a good investment in time. The project took an entire week, so we also got to spend some good quality time together. Not something we get a lot of these days.

Before we started, here's what it looked like. BOOOOORING

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Let's get to work! April, my mom, and myself broke the jobs up. The first part was all me. I wanted to add some depth to the cabinets. Make them not look so boxy. So I grabbed something like 200' of 2" molding from Home Depot. The stuff was dirt cheap, sweet! I attached it to the cabinets with construction adhesive. Even without anything else, this made them look a LOT nicer, but we couldn't stop there...

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The cabinets required quite a bit of painting. I hate to paint, so that was left up to April and my mom. We started with a tinted primer. This was some special primer from Lowes. The shit stuck amazingly well. It required NO sanding!

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Wait, did you notice that? Go look at the first picture again. The walls are now yellow too. Ape was in beast mode. Then they started painting the cabinets. This was a long process. Again it took almost a week to do. The cabinets got three coats of paint on top of the primer. This is the final color on some of the cabinets. These were taken with a cell phone; its really not as purple as it looks.

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You can see the greyish color better in this pic:
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The torch was passed back to me for the finishing touches. We got some really cool pulls from Cool Knobs and Pulls. Thanks for the suggestion @kiwi!

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It's obviously not done. Since we're doing it ourselves, it can be a slow process to fit it in with everything else in life, but we're trying. Next go around, I'd like to learn to pour my own concrete counter tops. I'd also like to rearrange the placement of the islands. And the tile floor. And... Some day...
 
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Looks good. Wish I could just do that to my kitchen, but ours were made from particle board and have had some damage in the 17 years they've been in the kitchen (not all those years are ours)

I've been thinking about building my own, but the wife thinks it would make the kitchen shut down for too long.
 
Looks good. Wish I could just do that to my kitchen, but ours were made from particle board and have had some damage in the 17 years they've been in the kitchen (not all those years are ours)

I've been thinking about building my own, but the wife thinks it would make the kitchen shut down for too long.

Building cabinets themselves?
 
Building cabinets themselves?

I would build it myself yes. But the way I would do it is build the cabinets taking my time in the basement. Then, on a Saturday or Sunday (when she normally doesn't do much cooking), I'd rip out the old, do any needed patchwork, then put the bottom cabinets in and lay the counter top. (already measured and cut). Then another weekend do the same to the top cabinets. The floor looks great so I wouldn't mess with that. Really the only things we would need to change are the cabinets and countertops.

I would switch from particle board to solid wood.
 
Looks good. Wish I could just do that to my kitchen, but ours were made from particle board and have had some damage in the 17 years they've been in the kitchen (not all those years are ours)

I've been thinking about building my own, but the wife thinks it would make the kitchen shut down for too long.

Installing them could certainly be done in a weekend. But building them would be a pain in the ass. More specifically, I personally wouldn't have fun doing that. But my hats off to you sir if you do.
 
Installing them could certainly be done in a weekend. But building them would be a pain in the ass. More specifically, I personally wouldn't have fun doing that. But my hats off to you sir if you do.

Yeah. I'd want to do it right, so I'd take my time building them, and definitely wouldn't install them the same day I finished building them.
 
Looks good!

We have been organizing and decided to go the doorless cabinet route. Took the doors off half the upper cabinets to try it out. (Separated the hinges) Once all the crap was removed it doesn't look bad. The other rest of the cabinets will take some organization before the doors can come off though. We figure we'll live with it a while and if we like it, pick up some new cheap cabinets from IKEA. Seems like the doors are the most expensive part of cabinets.
 
Looks good!

We have been organizing and decided to go the doorless cabinet route. Took the doors off half the upper cabinets to try it out. (Separated the hinges) Once all the crap was removed it doesn't look bad. The other rest of the cabinets will take some organization before the doors can come off though. We figure we'll live with it a while and if we like it, pick up some new cheap cabinets from IKEA. Seems like the doors are the most expensive part of cabinets.

We'd have to keep things too neat for that to work.
 
Looks good!

We have been organizing and decided to go the doorless cabinet route. Took the doors off half the upper cabinets to try it out. (Separated the hinges) Once all the crap was removed it doesn't look bad. The other rest of the cabinets will take some organization before the doors can come off though. We figure we'll live with it a while and if we like it, pick up some new cheap cabinets from IKEA. Seems like the doors are the most expensive part of cabinets.

They are. Remember. Cabinets are just 5 pieces of wood with shelves. The doors can have intricate designs, etc.
 
Yeah, I'm tempted to remove all the doors on my cabinets and replace them with a cherrywood door, with most of them being cherrywood with a big glass front.

But I've got other things I want to do first.
 
Looks great! I would highly avoid concrete counter tops, though. They are exceptionally porous and very easy to stain. My general contractor dad has a demo showroom with cement counter tops and they are in terrible shape because of how porous they are. They might be cheaper and/or easier to do one's self, but you won't like the end product in 5 years of use.