Kitchen Cabinet Remodel Days 1-2

I am hard at work redoing our kitchen cabinets.. Nothing like updating and painting 45 cabinet doors, cabinets and 13 drawers to make you go "what was I thinking?"... I love my kitchen and after we put in our new wood floors we knew back in March that it was going to be too much wood. So, when we purchased the flooring we also purchased the kit and new hardware to refurbish our kitchen cabinets.

We are using the Rusto-leum Cabinet kit.. It's a four step process and let me tell you it's VERY time consuming so if you want to do this, make sure you have AT LEAST a week to devote to it. If you have as many cabinets, drawers and doors as I do then you will need at least that long, maybe more. 

 

First things first.. Mapping out your kitchen. With as many doors I have I needed a game plan so I could put them back where they came from.. (So all the holes for the hinges match up)

 

I drew out my kitchen and then numbered all the doors, which I then put sticky notes onto corresponding doors. I took off all the hardware (hinges and screws) and placed them into a dixie cup labeled with the same number as the door. (We are replacing the handles with something new so they all went into a large ziplock bag and we will be donating them to Habitat For Humanity Restore here in town.) We have kept the hinges as they go real well with the new handles.

 

I decided to work on one section at a time. For the first day I chose the top cabinets along the wall by the sink, and oven. It ended up being 13 cabinet doors and two sets of cabinets to start out with.

 

Stage One of the process is DEGLOSSING the cabinets and doors. This means some scrubbing to get off the gloss and to remove any dirt, grease etc from everything.. Then, it's taping time. I had to tape everything that I wasn't going to paint which was just inside each cabinet opening. The kit has just enough to paint front/back of doors and the outsides of the cabinets (not inside)

 

Stage Two.. Base Coat.. We chose Antique White as our base coat since it matches our trim throughout the kitchen/dining room..

 

Just a few of my doors all lined up... Base Coat complete

 

Stage Three- Glazing the cabinets. I chose the technique where you apply with a sponge brush the glaze and wipe it off with the rag thats provided in the kit. I know the pictures above are hard to see the results but they look beautiful.. They now look like custom cabinets.

 

I will be adding the final Stage.. Stage 4 today which is the Top Protective Clear Coat and then it will sit for 12 hours and we'll then be able to hang it all up with the hardware.

 

It's coming along nicely. Today is Day 3 and when I'm done with it, I'll post what I've completed thus far.. Here above was my first two days of work.. It's a lot of work, but it's looking great so far!!