To wrap this up...

I guess I am not a blogger.  I haven't been on here in 6 months!

A friend was writing a blog and I enjoyed reading it.  then I felt guilty for forgetting about this one. 

So.....I should at least have my "after pics" on here of the kitchen - don't ya think?

I am glad I did it.  After six months, I would say that I will need to touch up the paint once a year because it does wear a bit in high touch areas such as near the knobs. 

But - compared to the old oak kitchen.  This is much more me. 

Bathroom

The kitchen has been a long slow process.  I have seen it slowly evolve over the last 6 weeks.  I have a few hours of painting to do and we are good to go!

The bathroom was more of a sudden makeover.  I purchased all the materials and hoped they would go well together. Then, over the course of a few days it was all put together.

So, here are some before and afters of my bathroom
Before :

And now after :

I am so happy with the new bathroom.  I haven't decided yet if I will put a black cabinet above the toilet.  I don't know if that would clutter the bathroom - right now it just looks nice and I am scared to ruin it!

The bathroom was always the room where - people would come and say nice house.  Then after using the bathroom they would say - did you renovate this house.  It was the room that OBVIOUSLY was not done and did not fit with the rest of the house.  The decor I chose for the "new' bathroom really is in line with the rest of the house so I really like the flow. 

My new kitchen has a similar style going.  These renos make my fell like my house is consistent in style.

It's coming

As mentioned, I was able to get the knobs and pulls that I wanted.  We were able to hide the exsiting handle holes.  After the initial wookd putty filler, we then touched them up with a couple of layers of poly filla.

The doors (with the exceptional of a few drawers) are all up.  What does everyone say when they see it?  "It's so bright!"  I really never considered my kitchen dark before but the white kitchen really is bright.

I am happy with the hardware we choose and think it looks good.  The paint job is very good but not perfect.  Now that the doors are up I have seen many little spots that could use a little touch up. 

So for the last few weeks I have basically  been wating - for the tile to be installed and the new cabinet to come and the moulding to arrive.  Once the new stuff is in I can paint it and get it ready. 

At least the last two weeks have forced me to acknowledge that it is summer time and enjoy the outdoors a little bit.

Handles or knobs

Once the paint was on the back of the cabinets - I loved it - but I could see the holes where the handles used to be.  Not glaring, but enough that I could pick of the spot where the handles were quite quickly.  The hinges were all quite well hidden but not the huge screws that were once handles.  The wood putty we had used to fill the holes had sort of shrunk down.

I had really hoped to switch from these "lovely handles"

to knobs.  But this was only possible if I could totally hide those holes. At this point only the backs of the cabinets were done.  We could still try to fix the fronts so that these screw holes would be hidden.

We looked at a few options.  In the end we touched up the holes with PolyFilla.  About 2 or 3 times each cabinet (touch up, sand, touch up, sand...)

And it worked. 

I can see almost none of the handles holes and I get to switch to knobs! 

Painting Day

We started before 8AM on the Thursday morning.  When Mom first opened the primer she had me panicked.  It seemed very watery. It was a holiday here so there was no going to the store to get something else.  We stirred for about 10 minutes and it improved.  The primer ended up going on very well.  It was the Inslx oil based with alcohol.  Very fast drying (probably because of the alcohol).  So we primed all the cabinets and then all the framing in the kitchen.  The cabinets could be covered in about an hour but it took at least that long to do all the trim.

We started over again with our first coat of Cabinet Coat paint.   The cloud white color we chose is a very nice soft white.  I have white appliances so I didn't want anything too creamy.

We covered everything once and then took a break. 

I purchased 2 galllons of th Cabinet Coat paint.  I realized that I purchased way too much.  So while waiting in between coats I painted the door leading to the garage and some door frames. 

We finished a second coat of paint just around supper time.  You are supposed to wait six hours between coats.  We did not do this.  We probably did 3 hours or so.  We had the windows open, fans on and it was quite breezy.  The paint dried very quickly.  This seemed to work for us but I wouldn't recommend it unless you were sure it was dry.  Another thing to note is that we only painted one side of the cabinets.  The fronts of the cabinets were face down on foam and we did not turn over the cabinets.  We would be waiting a couple of days before we turned the cabinets over. 

So here we are :

I actually like my kitchen better already and the doors aren't even on yet!

Step by Step

On Monday evening we took down all the cabinets and took off all hardware.  That took only an hour or two for two people.  Because the cabinets were 25 years old, a few of the hinges (such as below the sink and next to dishwasher) were pretty caked in there.  They pretty much needed to be dug out.  But, this really wasn't that big a job.

My kitchen with no cabinets :

After this was done I spent another hour or so washing all the cabinets down with TSP.  My goal was to degrease.  The cabinets had had those little rubber stoppers on the inside of cabinets (to prevent the doors banging) and there was a lot of glue residue.  The TSP really helped get rid of that. 

Tuesday - I spent about 3 hours sanding down all the cabinets.  I had an electric sander with 150 grit paper.  I had never used a power sander and didn't really know much about sanding.  But I would say I spent about 10 minutes per cabinet and focused on the areas were hinges and handles had been the most but tried to sand all over.  This was not really a job I enjoyed. 

That evening we had some help and my mother and a friend filled all the holes with putty.  Sanded.  Then puttied again.  Then sanded again.  They spent a few hours on this.  When they were done, all holes felt smooth to the touch. 

Here is an example of how it looked :

On Wednesday we set up the the house to paint on Thursday.  We set the sanded cabinets up on sawhorses in two rooms of the house.  Not pictured, we ended up putting some packing foam beneath the cabinets that later then we had to flip them, they went onto something soft. 

Now we were ready for the big day - painting. 

The Cabinets

There are people out there who warn you against painting your oak cabinets.  However, I kept looking at different before and after pictures online. I always preferred the finished product of painted white cabinets.  So why not?

I should mention that my oak cabs are 25 years old - so their lifespan as is was nearing the end.  If this gets me an extra 5-10 years out of my cabinets - I am that much ahead of the game, right?

Something else you should know about me.  I am an "it'll do-er".  I'm just not a perfectionist.  If something looks "good enough", it is hard for me to keep going to get it better.  I am going to work hard through these projects to keep my standards as high as I can.  I know that expecially for this project, if will only turn out nice if it done right.  Of course - my husband and mother will make sure that everything passes inspection.

My old cabinets had handles and outside hinges.  I am hoping to get knobs instead of handles and invisble hinges.  However, this is only possible  if I can hide the existing holes.  We'll see...

For paint, I have purchased an oil based, w/alcohol primer by Insl-x and Cabinet Coat Insl'x paint for the cabients in Cloud White by Benjamin Moore.