My post read: The newest project has to do with our kitchen cabinets. This will be the mother load of all projects for me, to date. Currently the cabinets are white with big and bulky black handles. I have taken one small cabinet door down and put some paint remover on it. I've only done the back of the cabinet so far, just in case we didn't find what I was hoping. What I found is a great surprise... once fully stripped down there is a very light and pure wood. It's going to be a VERY large undertaking but my goal is to strip all the cabinets and get it to the natural wood color. A blank slate to stain. Also we'll get new hardware for the cabinets, which is a much needed update.
This post is to show you my first update, of many, about how this rather large endeavor is going. I am attempting to accomplish this task, even though I had a couple warning responses to the large undertaking of it all.
I first want to show you what the cabinets look like to start with:
So the task has begun. I have completed two full cabinet doors, inside & out. I have 18 cabinet doors to go and 6 drawers to completed. That's a grand total of 24 more pieces I have to tackle before I can even start the frames of all of this.
It is definitely a large project, but I have been encouraged by a couple things: 1. the two cabinet doors that have been completed look great (pictures below), and 2. I spoke with a friend, Jessica, tonight at Kelly's soccer game and she's done this project before in her own house. She encouraged me that it could be done, but warned me that it WILL TAKE TIME. Lots of time, but she's so proud of the work she accomplished and loves how her kitchen looks now. So hopefully thoughts about these two thing will push me through the many times I get worn out or annoyed by the project I've chosen.
Here are the AFTER pictures I have so far:
Doesn't the wood look wonderful?
I don't understand why someone stained these black, then painted them white, and then painted them white a couple more times?
The top layer is a thick white layer of paint - that comes up very quickly and easily with the paint stripper gel I use. The second layer of white paint is obviously older and not so thick. So my second layer of stripper gel does the trick on that but not so easily as the top layer. And the final BLACK layer of stain is the one that makes me do the most work. I sand that layer off. Using a hand held sander I work hard to get that layer off and expose the pure wood. I like how it looks though once I'm through.
By Kelly's estimation, I should attempt to do at least 2 pieces a week. With 24 more pieces to go, that's AT LEAST 12 more weeks (or 3 months) of work BEFORE I even attempt to come inside and start the outer boxes. Wow. Starts to sound like an even bigger project the more I talk about it, so before I get depressed and lose my momentum, I'm signing off now. Update #1 completed.
3 comments:
i liked the white cabinets:( what are you going to do with them??
Staining them brown of some sort, getting new hardware, changing the paint color top & bottom of the room... etc. :)
There was enough GUNKED UP white paint on those cabinets you can see it on there. The pictures look good, the real nature of them is not wonderful - lots of chipped places and such.
Good luck goober! A large undertaking for sure but you can do it and it will look great I am sure! That kitchen definitely needs a new look!
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