Painted Interior Cabinets: Pinterest Challenge Spring Edition

The Pinterest Challenge (Spring Edition)  is here!  It's time to join in on the pinterest project party fun.  Last challenge I was a guest host (still crazy to me) and put together a diy fabric ottoman.  The Pinterest challenge is just a fun way of getting all of us to stop pinning and actually doing!  I love it.  This time around Sherry and Katie have two new awesome co-hosts Emily and Renee.  Make sure you stop by their blogs to check out their projects and link up with them!

Ok, so on to my pinterest project - painting the interior kitchen cabinets.  Here is my "pinspiration" - I'm  sure lots of you have seen this cute photo and even pinned it yourself.

This project is from Elsie and Emma over at A Beautiful Mess.  Isn't is so cute and fun?  I want my cabinets to look like this.  Challenge accepted.

Ok - first confession.  I'm not as finished as I would have liked to have been.  I do have the painting completed just not the cabinets filled yet.   But, I'm getting ahead of myself - let's take a look back (way back) to the original state of our kitchen cabinets when we moved it.

Not pretty.  Almost immediately the first thing we did was paint our kitchen cabinets.  We love them now.  They are obviously not new but way better.  We have debated so many times on what to do with this kitchen.  Do we gut the whole thing, leave the cabinets and just replace the countertop - the questions loom.  The longer we live here the more we lean towards not gutting the whole thing.  We do however want to replace the the countertops, add a backsplash, take down that weird middle piece over the window, etc.  We just don't want to over upgrade our small house.  So, those questions are for another day.

Here's the secret behind those painted cabinets - they are totally crazy half primed on the inside.

This was one of those - I'll get to it one day things.  Well, the one day has finally come.  

Here's a glimpse at the bottom cabinet - that shelf is old and grody.  Don't freak - I had it covered with shelf liner but removed it to clean and paint.

So, the color choice.  I wanted something fun but not too crazy and something that would be a pretty contrast/background for my dishes and kitchen gadgets.  This pretty navy/indigo color by valspar wonderfully named "Jazz Club" totally won.  I also loved the quality of this paint - it went on really smooth and nice.  I did do two coats but my cabinets were totally weird and half primed so I went into this knowing that would be the case.

I love using a foam cabinet roller when painting cabinets - the interior was no different.

This is my first coat before edging it all out.  Its a little brighter here (this is during the drying phase).  Paint almost always dries a little darker - and this paint is no exception.

The actual painting of the interior of the cabinets was actually really easy and quick.  The worst part about this project was pulling everything out and having your kitchen all over your house while you are in the middle of this.  

So after two quick and easy coats we have this.  I.love.it.  I love this color, I love that our cabinets feel finished now, I can't wait to re-stock them and organize them - I could go on.

Oh, here's the bottom shelf.  I love the pop of navy down there.  Now I need to find a really fun and pretty cabinet liner for the bottom.

I go by and just open the cabinets up for no reason now to just see the insides.  This totally makes me want to replace a few doors with glass doors so I can easily see inside.

I still have some white touch ups I need to do and of course - actually filling the cabinets back up.  But for now I'm in love.

Thanks so much to Katie, Sherry, Emily and Renee for hosting the pinterest challenge!  

Thanks for stopping by today!

DIY - Painting Knotty Pine Cabinets

This is a project that ended up being a lot more time consuming than originally thought, so goes the life of diy remodeling I suppose.  Like I mentioned before here, I have been very surprised at the number of people who enjoy the knotty pine look of our cabinets and had many question my idea of painting them.  But ultimately for us they just were not our style and a fresh white coat of paint needed to happen.



So, the first step in our project was to remove all the doors and hardware, simple enough.  The first little issue that arose was the weather.  My plan was to paint all of the cabinets outside but of course it was raining the weekend we had to get it done.  So we just set up a drop cloth in the kitchen and laid all of the doors out on the floor.



Our next step was to apply a good coat of oil based primer.   You really have to use an oil based primer for knotty pine in order to get a good coverage on the dark knots.  The primer actually didn't take very long to dry and we were off to painting.  I chose to use a water based no voc paint in eggshell finish.  After  one coat of paint we realized we had issues.  Streaking issues and hole issues to be exact - this is after we also realized that all new holes would need to be drilled for our new hardware, more on that later.

Whoops, I think we might have jumped the gun on the painting and forgotten some crucial steps.  Luckily we had some wood putty handy (from all of the other numerous holes we have found in this house - which I think my dear husband will be writing on soon).  We filled in the holes, sanded those cabinets down and primed again and painted them twice.  It took forever and was a little frustrating when we realized we had to pretty much start over but, we love the end result.  They look five million times better and I absolutely do not regret our decision.  So, if you are thinking of painting your wood or knotty pine cabinets, here are the steps I would follow:

1. Remove your cabinet doors and all hardware
2. Fill in all the holes with wood putty!!!
3. Sand those babies
4. Give them a good coat of an oil based primer
5. Next is two coats of any paint of your choice
6. Give your cabinets a good 24 hours to dry, at least
7. Re-hang your cabinet doors
8. Admire your lovely fresh and clean cabinets

We still need to add the rest of our hardware, hopefully that will happen this weekend!

  

Chatham snuck in on this one.

Looking at the journey these cabinets have been through and seeing them now all fresh and white and new, it reminds me of the journey we take in life with Christ.  Like our cabinets, we all have issues and we have sin.  The amazing grace of Jesus can cover a multitude of sins.  By the precious blood of Christ we are made white as snow, new.  It's pretty cool that now when I look at our cabinets I am reminded of the redeeming and cleansing love of our Savior.  You can even see God in cabinets, who knew?

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool".  Isaiah 1:18

Mini Makeover - Kitchen Backsplash

We have inherited a lot of old-school design ideas here at this house, one of the not so desirable ones is the faux marble plastic backsplash in our kitchen.  It's quite tacky to be honest.  Before moving in I started brainstorming different ideas on what to do with it in the meantime.  Eventually we plan on replacing most of the kitchen so I didn't want to put a lot of money or effort into a temporary fix.  Some different ideas I had was tin, bead board and even vinyl tile flooring.  But, before I went out and bought anything I went ahead and tried painting it, just to see if it would work and how it would look.  To my surprise, paint was just the ticket.  I already had it, so it was a free upgrade and that is always awesome and let's face it I'm cheap.  It really helps the space look clean and fresh and will be a perfect temporary fix until we save enough cash for a classic and fabulous tile backsplash, hopefully similar to something like this subway tile (love it).  Take a look at the before and afters..not too bad.

The paint on the top is from me

It really was super simple, I applied two coats of a good oil based primer and then two coats of paint.  I used a water based no voc paint and it worked out perfectly, the key was a good base of primer.  I didn't even take the time to sand or do any type of prep to the plastic backsplash.  If you have an ugly plastic weird backsplash in your house then painting it is definitely worth a try, in my opinion I thought it wouldn't be any worse than it already was.  It probably isn't the best permanent fix but something to hold you over until you can replace it with something you love.  Happy backsplash painting!

Linking up here: Full of Great Ideas $0 Budget Party

Some Progress

Before we had to officially move in to the new place we had several days to work on some painting.  The first big job we were aiming to tackle was the kitchen.  This is probably the most time consuming part of the house as far as painting goes.  Everything from trim, cabinets, doors, paneling, walls - all of it needed painting.  Something I am starting to learn is that I do not estimate time for jobs very well.  Pretty much I need to add an extra 3 days to everything I'm doing I guess.  Anyway, we did get the kitchen fully painted before having to move in and we are sooooo glad that part is over (and I know my parents are too).  Painting paneling was actually pretty easy, a good coat of oil based primer and a couple coats of paint did the trick, pretty simple.  Painting knotty pine proved to be a little trickier.  These cabinets are old and I think covered in 40 years of grease so we had some streaking issues to conquer - which we did thankfully.  I'll put up a full post on what we did soon.  We also encountered a few other problems that we will tell you about soon as well.  Let's just say, that's where the extra 3 days came into play.  All in all we are pleased with how everything turned out and the kitchen doesn't even look like the same room anymore.  It's bright and fresh, perfect!

This is my Dad's Masterpiece wall, the grooves in the knotty pine proved to be extra fun

Our knotty pine cabinets are no more, they are white and pretty!!

Just a litte reminder of what our kitchen looked like before....

And now after

More kitchen pics coming soon...stayed tuned.