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Kitchen Cabinets: Paint by Number (kind of)
Even though our kitchen cabinets were in decent shape, we wanted to change the color. Here is the "before" shot:
We were not going to spend the money to buy new cabinets, so our options were painting or staining. Although our original plan was to stain the cabinets darker, we quickly changed our plan to painting them once we realized the inner shelves and "skeleton" of the cabinets was made of particleboard, (which can yield inconsistent results if trying to match them to a stain from what I read online). I will give props to Eric (husband) because the organization piece of this story was all his idea. To my pleasant surprise, I got home one day to find all of the doors and drawers not only off of the cabinets, but laid out and numbered!
He used tape to number each door and each drawer with a number. Then he drew a diagram so he knew which door/drawer went in which spot in the kitchen. I thought, "Wouldn't we know where it goes just from what shape and size it is....and memory?" but evidently he had found (and read) that this was the way to go to ensure that you put your kitchen back together correctly. Makes sense, right?
Here are the drawers laid out in the living room before we moved them to the garage. You can see a small dark square on the side of the drawer above (on the white side). That is the piece of tape and there was a number on each piece of tape. Once he got them all numbered, we laid them out in the garage for priming and painting.
After laying them in order, we put the piece of tape on the 2x4 that was under/next to each door. We had to make sure that if we picked up a door that we put it back in the right place by its rightful number. The picture below - primed and ready for paint!
The biggest pain was taping off all of the cabinets. It was worth it to not have to worry about being careful on the edges, but it took some time! (All that blue is the painter's tape...and sorry about the blurry photo...)
When talking to a pro at a paint store, he suggested using a paint sprayer to paint the doors/drawers. He said to have someone do it for us or to get a sprayer at a local home store. We took his advice and bought one, and it proved to be an excellent investment for this project! I have no doubt we will have plenty of other projects where it will come in handy. (In the photo below the paint holster is not attached yet...)
After the doors and drawers were painted, we put our newly-painted kitchen back together, with the help of our numbers and diagram, and also added new hardware. It makes a huge difference - and now I can't wait to save up for new countertops to match our cabinets!






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