Refacing the Cabinets

Before

After completing my first DIY project I felt a good deal of accomplishment. My wife must have been happy with the results too, because soon after finishing she asked me to tackle our cabinets. We didn’t have enough money to replace our current cabinets so we decided to give our cabinets a face lift. We did our research on some of the different products, what works best for the amount of time and money invested. After all of research, we came to an agreement that we would try the Rust-Oleum transformation kit, Espresso color.

My wife didn’t want me to start on the kitchen just in case it didn’t turn how she wanted. She told me to start in the bathroom. It was a smaller space to do and would be less work to redo if I messed up or it didn’t turn out to her liking. It turns out that after completing the bathroom she loved how it looked! She was excited that as soon as school let out for the summer, she put me right to work. That way I would have time to focus on refacing our kitchen cabinets, which were in dire need of it.

Since I hate painting I needed to buy some supplies. General rollers and paint brushes work just fine (Painting starter kit). I started with removing all drawers and cabinet doors. The first step is to brush on the stain and sealant remover. After letting it set for a while, you then need to wipe it all off. After it has all been wiped clean, it is time to start painting. I needed to do three coats on every piece. This took two days to complete and to let it dry. I then spent another day doing the same thing to all the woodwork inside the kitchen. Once the paint dried I applied a final sealant coat on everything. We didn’t want it too shiny so I only put two sealant coats on everything.I am one, who is not very patient and really does not like painting, AT ALL! By the time I knew what I was getting myself into it was too late. It is not a project you can finish in a day and in fact, it took me about a week to finish the entire kitchen. Thank goodness I decided to do it before we had kids, otherwise it probably would have never gotten done.

Once I was done doing all the painting and sealing it, it was time to start putting the kitchen back together. Our kitchen was pretty out of date so we figured we should add new hardware hinges and handles while giving our cabinets a facelift.

When it was all said and done it was very time-consuming and took a lot of patience. Things I usually struggle with. As I sit here and look at the photos, I would say it was definitely worth it. Again, my wife must have been happy with the results because as you can see comparing the before and after photos, we ended up redoing the backsplash and counter top in the kitchen as well.

Lesson: If you have patience and put in the work, results may not present themselves right away, but eventually they will present themselves.