When we bought our house a few years ago, there were a number of style decisions made by the prior owners that we did not agree with. Almost all of them were cosmetic in nature: the entire first floor was painted in a pastel yellow with giant golden curtains; the master bedroom was neon green with beige carpets and a pale yellow popcorn ceiling; and the kitchen was oppressively, relentlessly brown. The “gourmet kitchen!” described in the listing was an exaggeration – the cabinets were original to the 1980 house, the flooring was old and tired, and things like the dishwasher and stove were on their last legs.
I replaced the dishwasher shortly after we moved in, and we got a new oven last year, but the big project we had in our heads that I finally got around to tackling over the 2019 holiday break was repainting the damn kitchen cabinets. Here’s the obligatory Pinteresty before-and-after.
Project Outline
Keeping this relatively cheap was important. I did investigate a few options including replacing all of the doors and drawers with new ones, but that was cost-prohibitive for us (thousands of dollars). Plus, the cabinets were non-standard sizes because some… liberties… were taken. For example, one of the hanging cabinet boxes (in the far corner of the wall above) is a full 36” wide, but half of it is covered by another cabinet – so they hung another one-door cabinet next to that, and we have two doors that open to the left. Just little weird quirks like that, as with any house.
New hardware was a must. The hinges were something we ultimately did not replace – hinges are more expensive than you’d think. So other than a few hinges I chose to replace manually due to pure annoyance (at a cost of $6.50), we instead spray painted all of the worn brass color hinges with a metallic silver.
Similarly, we looked at many paint options. I wanted to minimize the amount of work and get the best looking results. I considered things like milk paint and the Rust-Oleum “all in one” box kits, but given the size of what I was tackling neither was quite a fit (nor cost-effective). On top of that, after looking at the doors themselves it was pretty clear I needed to do a full sanding, priming, and painting – skipping anything wasn’t an option. I went with Sherwin-Williams paint despite the cost over something like Behr (at Home Depot) because a) it’s not Home Depot and b) it has been good for my prior projects.
Lastly, small touches. Brown being the main theme meant that all of the outlets in the kitchen were brown with brown faceplates. I replaced all that ugly shit with simple white switches and outlets, and upgraded a couple to USB-A and USB-C ports too. All of the drawers had single round pull knobs – I took the time to change those out to actual handles versus that cheap crap. And there was a really questionable quarter round at the top of the cabinets, abutting the soffit – that came down and (as of this writing) will be replaced with something simple and clean.
I had planned on painting the toe kicks (which are a chocolate brown) but chose to just leave them because no one sees them.
All told, we had 27 doors and 13 drawers (nothing like odd numbers!) Start to finish, this took about 6 solid days spread over a week and a half due to the holidays. Our total cost was about $475, with half of that going to paint and primer followed by hardware (hardware is more expensive than you think.)
Lessons Learned
Instead of a Pinteresty step-by-step DIY post I wanted to share a number of things I learned in this process, which was only my second house project of this scale. (Prior was replacing wood paneling with drywall in a house we lived in years ago, but I had two friends really do about 90% of the work on that, so that doesn’t quite count.) For reference, I’m mildly handy – repainting and simple electrical is easy, as is simple plumbing, but things like a full on room revamp are out of scope for me.
Lesson 1: Will require more effort than you think, and will go over budget.
Don’t be fooled by endless blog posts that say this is a weekend project. It is not. Unless you’ve got, say, 6 cabinets total, this is a very long weekend or a week-long thing. In addition, buffer in overage for cost.
Lesson 2: Proper prep is a great idea, but I’m still concerned about the results.
Ultimately, not skipping steps was necessary. Fully sanding and then priming and then painting was something I simply needed to do. On nearly all surfaces I ended up having one or two coats of primer, and two coats of paint. The only thing I let through with one coat of paint was the windowsill – which was also in brown – because it was the very last thing I did and I frankly didn’t care at that point. It looked good enough.
The concern about the results is this: occasionally while working on painting, I found it trivially easy for me to nick through the paint and primer to see the original brown wood underneath. That suggests I didn’t prep the doors as well as I could have.
Similarly, for the drawers – which are pretty cheap – I only painted the faces, and left everything else in the original light brown. If I did this again, I would paint the entire front and back of the face. Not a huge deal to me.
The painting of the hinges worked pretty well, but their usage (they’re hinges!) means that some paint may go away over time. They’re still way better than the ugly brass.
Lastly: I would be way more aggressive with tracking down paint drips. There were some that made it through to the final product and while I notice them, most people won’t. (I’d say I did a B/B- job on handling the doors’ many bevels.)
Lesson 3: Drying takes forever.
I set up my garage as the working/staging area for all of this, and that was great. But drying took easily double the time I would have estimated.
Lesson 4: I need a yardstick and/or high-quality ruler.
I didn’t have one. I had a level with imprecise measurements and an old tape measure that was floppy. For the cabinet drawers I ended up using my trusty Field Notes notebook’s built-in ruler to get things precise.
Lesson 5: Label and number everything.
Before starting I numbered all cabinets. Hardware went into bags that were labeled appropriately. Outside of one minor mix-up at the very end when I was hanging doors, this was necessary.
I then posted these on my garage wall and it was totally helpful and necessary.
Lesson 6: Drill holes for new hardware prior to sanding/prep.
As mentioned, the prior owners had single pull knobs on every drawer. I figured, “Oh, I’ll measure and drill holes for handles after everything is painted.” Nope! Bad idea. I did that once and then realized it was completely backwards. Drill new holes (and fill old ones) first – then do everything else. Speaking of which….
Lesson 7: Assume the prior owners did nothing right.
There I was, installing the final handle on the final drawer – one we used a lot. I held up the drawer for a final look and… huh. The handle wasn’t centered. Like, obviously not centered. The reason? The single pull – the one we lived with for 3 years – was also not centered! I was floored when I first caught this and measured it. Things were quite a bit off. I ended up refilling the holes and remounting the handle. (Hilariously, on the way to this post I caught another that had been the same way – but this drawer is already “done” and in the kitchen. It’s a touch-up project now because it’ll annoy me.)
Lesson 8: Have good equipment.
I did all of this work with a Purdy angled brush – all of it. I bought a couple of small foam rollers but those, frankly, sucked for this job. Also, plastic drop clothes suck for drying things – paint detaches from the plastic and sticks to the item. I chased after dozens of little paint specs and spots after things were “done”.
In Conclusion
All told, the end result is dramatic and completely worth it. Our kitchen looks fresh and so, so much brighter – it’s truly amazing.