what i’ve been up to

Giving our kitchen a much needed update. New cabinetry wasn’t in our budget so we opted to paint them.

Good-bye dingy wood.

Hello clean and beautiful white.
Have I mentioned how much I love white? White space, white color, I love it all.

The project is taking much longer than I had originally anticipated. Much longer. But I’m totally loving the results. The kitchen looks so much brighter now. In fact, I think it’s now the brightest room in the house.

I’m hoping to get back to working + designing next week. And once the kitchen project is complete I’ll post more before + after photos.

It’s friday! Have a wonderful weekend folks + Happy Father’s Day.

A special thanks to Peppermint of One Little Bird for all of the sage advice she’s given me on how to properly refinish cabinetry.

Blog Comments

Well it looks AMAZING!

Love it Liz!

looks like a huge difference! we're planning on updating the kitchen soon and i think we're going to paint ours a cream color with a rustic finish.

Looks like my kind of kitchen! Gorgeous 🙂

Ooh Liz…it looks great!! Can't wait to see the rest of it in person. Great job! I know it's been really crazy but the end result is lookin' totally worth it.

GORGEOUS! i mentioned this the other day to my husband and he thought I was nuts because of all the work it would take.

Amazing result ! It looks like a new !

yaaaaaay! i'm so happy for you!!! this looks AMAZZZZING!!!! i like my white cabinets too! dude… our "dingy" was twice as dark and twice as thick with laquer". hahahhaa. i'm SO glad you're getting to do this!! can't wait to see it all finished!!!!! xoxoxoxoxo

What color did you paint the cabinets? And what type of finish? I love the way your cabinets look and we could use an inexpensive update to our cabinets as well, but I have no idea where to start!! Willing to share how you went about the process? 🙂

Oh wow ! I thought the second picture was straight out of a magazine, but that's already your wonderfull result. Great work !

That is exactly the same project (and color) that I hope to finish this summer (and by 'me', I mean my son).

Please pass along that great advice because I'll need it!

Thanks guys! 🙂

Maria – cream w/rustic finish sounds amazing – please share photos when you're done.

Evelyn and Kimberly – I'll be happy to share the process! I was planning to breakdown the entire process in an upcoming post but who knows when I will actually get around to that?

Most of the hard work was in the prep:
1. cleaning + degreasing. I started off using a tsp substitute. When I ran out I ended up cleaning with a homemade concoction of 1/2 cup baking soda + 1/2 cup vinegar + 2 gallons of hot water mix. This worked just as well but minus the harsh smell that the tsp substitute had.

2. sanding. sanded the first door by hand and quickly wised up and finished the rest off with a sander. so much quicker! I used fine grit paper (100 – 150).

3. primer. painted 2 THIN coats of primer (Zinnser 1-2-3)

4. paint. benjamin moore satin impervo enamel (water based paint) in white.

I bookmarked 3 DIY kitchen cabinet tutorials that I found to be extremely helpful. You can find those links by visiting my tumblr page:

http://liztamanaha.tumblr.com/

Also, Peppermint of One Little Bird served as an excellent source for me! She's linked in the post. 🙂

Hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions!

wow looks amazing! You should take some more pix of it!

LOVE the way it looks . . . so clean and fresh! We refinished our cabinets about a year ago. We went with a distressed cream look. Gave the room a whole new feel!

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