Furniture Makeovers & Building Stuff
I Gotcha Covered
Even though I’m sure you figured we’d just grow to love the look of our crazy exposed hood (“oooh, it’s so unfinished chic”) we were ready to get this hood-covering train in motion. Oh and as for the height of the range hood, we just followed the manufacturer’s recommendations (the JennAir website offered a range and we went right in the middle of that range at 34″ above the counter).
As for the hood cover, the first thing we did was use photoshop to mock up two different options to figure out what we thought would look best. This was our original thought, since it looks most like a lot of the hoods in our inspiration pictures. The squares on the front are supposed to be panels we’d make using trim.
But it looked a bit top-heavy to us, so we tried this version instead:
We liked that much better, so I took some measurements and drew up a “technical” drawing of the plan. I roughly sketched the hood to scale (using some graph paper under this white sheet) with pen and then used a thicker marker to design the cover around it.
And in the other corner you can see where I started to figure out what sort of wood I would need to actually build this thing. I’m not going to even try to explain what this means now, since it will become clearer as you see the actual cover come together. But just know my goals with this thing were to:
- Make it sturdy (and use moisture/steam/grease resistant plywood so it would last)
- Make it as light as possible (I didn’t need worry about another heavy thing falling off of the wall)
- Make it pretty
When I returned from the store with some plywood panels and 1 x 2″ boards in hand, I got right to building. I was going to build from the bottom up so I started off by building a frame and cutting some plywood panels to size:
The frame is basically three pieces of 1 x 2″ screwed together in a U-shape using my Kreg Jig. To attach it to the wall, I made a couple more holes with my jig so that I could screw it tightly to the wood plank that we used to mount the hood (see, I told you that weird overhang would make sense!).
It looked a little something like this. Note that it’s not touching the actual hood at all, so our cover will essentially float around the entire thing (our high-efficiency range hood should have no issue directing moisture/steam up into the hood and up the vent, and our wood surround should stand up to everyday use like many wood hood surrounds built by various cabinetmakers and handymen/handywomen). We’ve heard from a ton of folks in blogland who have built or hired out wood covers since revealing our crush on them and we’re happy to report that everyone seems to have had a great experience with them (no moisture or steam issues with the wood around the hood). It actually makes sense since non-covered range hoods usually have wood cabinets against either side of them and they don’t typically have issues with those sort of things either.
Note: these pics were taken before we realized we should use metal foil tape and not duct tape for those vent joints, but we’ve since swapped it out and will share those pics in another update post about other things we have to share, like how we patched our giant honking ceiling holes, etc).
With the frame in place I started nailing the thin plywood panels in place.
Here’s what it looked like with the first three sides done.
Remember the reason that there’s a small gap around the outside is to leave room for us to reach the control buttons on the front of the hood. There’s enough room for our fingers to slip in, without being a totally garish amount of space.
And if you’re Sherry’s height (or me slightly ducking) you can even see the buttons so you don’t have to wonder what you’re pressing (to see any buttons on the underside of a hood you usually have to duck a bit to see them, so we like that ours are just as accessible, albeit slyly hidden).
To add the next “tier” to our cover, I had to build a slightly smaller version of the previous 1 x 2″ frame. Since this would be the one against which the sloped part of the cover would sit, I ran it through my table saw at an angle to make it easier for the angled piece of plywood to lay against it. I didn’t measure or anything to make the angle perfect – it was just an educated guess since I figured anything would be an improvement over it meeting the original square edge.
Here it is attached to the upper portion of the hood.
Even though the next set of plywood panels would sit just fine on the top edge of the previous set, I did add a small piece of 1 x 2″ to give me a place to secure them with a nail. And yes, I gave it another guesstimated angled cut to help that sloped piece sit better.
This picture should help make more sense out of this. See the sloped plywood panel in place?
The next two sides would be on only non-rectangular pieces of plywood. Since this angle had to be exact, I held the piece in place so I could mark the exact line that I had to cut.
Then I ran them through my table saw to get these fun little quadrilaterals. Wow, I don’t think I’ve used that term since Mrs. Miller’s 9th grade geometry glass. That’s the class where I decided I should wear my glasses during tests because they would help me feel smarter (even though I just needed them to read the blackboard). Nerd alert.
Anyways, here are those two panels attached on the sides. It’s starting to look like something, no? Of course it’s still very clunky and unfinished looking without trim, but we’ll get there in a minute…
For the third and final tier, we had to cover the vent pipe with the section I affectionately called “the chimney.” First I cut my tiniest 1 x 2″ frame to date. Ain’t he cute?
And then I screwed him straight into the ceiling (hitting nice firm wood that I knew would hold it nice and snug – you never want to drill up into nothing- that hollow feeling is the worst). The only problem was that I hadn’t accounted for how gargantuan the hole was for that vent pipe. Guess we’ve got more patching to do (Sherry’s my spackling queen). And we’ll eventually be installing crown molding around all of this too, so it’ll look nice and polished in the end.
Here’s the chimney covered with the plywood panel, essentially completing the major construction phase of this project.
So here’s what it looked like at that point. Hood is sufficiently covered. We still have access to the buttons. It’s plenty secure and we’re happy with the shape of it. It’s just looking a smidge unfinished. Okay, maybe more than a smidge.
This is where trim comes in. And I’m telling you, it’s one of those “details make the difference” things. I decided to make the trimming portion on this fairly easy on myself. In keeping with the theme of “make it light weight” I decided to use some super lightweight plywood. And to minimize nail holes (and having to hammer against the cover) I opted to glue everything in place. This method should definitely hold up to heat and moisture and all other kitchen loveliness (grease!) – especially once it’s primed and painted with the same super durable Benjamin Moore Advance paint that we used on our cabinets – so we’ll keep you posted.
We also ditched the idea of doing panels across the front and sides (as shown in our original renderings) because we kinda liked the clean look better (and worried smaller boxy panels might not jive with our existing cabinets). It also made my job a bit faster, meaning I had the first row of trim cut and glued into place in no time.
I did like working with the LiquidNails because it gave you a bit of play for the first 10 minutes (hence the tape above to stop it from moving when playtime was over). But I ran out about halfway through (it was an old tube leftover from something else) so I started using this leftover tube of Loctite instead… and kinda wished I had used it from the start. I wasn’t able to wiggle things into place as much (I had to peel it off and restick it instead) but things really stayed in place – meaning no more green tape was needed.
The top portion of trim took me a bit longer (especially because I ran out of wood and had to run out for more in the middle of everything), but by the end of the day I had it looking like this:
The angled cuts on the side took a bit of time too. We opted not to put trim on the chimney part because it’s not really supposed to be a “decorative” part of the hood. Plus there weren’t any open seams between the plywood or anything that needed “finishing.” Once we patch that ugly ceiling hole and add crown molding around the entire top of that wall (and hood) we think it’ll look swankypants indeed.
It’s not 100% perfect. For one, it needs to be primed and painted (we’ll do that when we prime and paint the open shelves we’re about to build) and it needs some caulk in a few places just to make it 100% seamless. But I’m just proud that I accomplished my three goals. It’s sturdy and durable. It’s lightweight. And it looks pretty (if I do say so myself).
Now of course it doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles that a professional hood might have, but once it’s primed and painted it should perform just as well as a painted cabinet would next to or above a hood. And it certainly was cheaper than the $3 – 4K price tag we saw some places (check out this post to see a price that had Sherry spitting liquid at her laptop). In the end it cost me about $90 to complete, mainly because I didn’t realize how much wood/trim I’d need. So I think that brings our total for the hood up to $150 (since the hood itself was $60 thanks to craigslist). Wait, that doesn’t include brackets/wood to hang it, so make that around $175. Still not bad considering we paid $250 for our last kitchen’s stainless steel hood (and it wasn’t an industrial strength JennAir one like the beauty we scored this time).
Even though it’s still a big, tan-colored box on the wall – I did take some “after” photos of the kitchen for ya. Mainly because with book photoshoots starting in our house this week I wasn’t sure of the next time our kitchen would look this clean again. It’s definitely still looking pretty raw in there (we need crown molding, shelves, a ton of color that Sherry can’t wait to add with art and accessories, new floors, an installed dishwasher, a light over the sink, etc) but we’re getting there.
As much as it’s kinda weird for us to see something hanging from this wall that’s been empty for two months, we do like that we’re starting to break up the sea of tile a bit. In some ways it just draws your eye more to that wall so you can stand there drooling. Not that we do that. Much.
It mainly just makes us eager to get that thing painted, get the ceiling patches sanded and painted, and get those open shelves hung. Sounds like a good project to talk about next, eh?
In the meantime, let’s talk about range hoods. Ever built one? If not, I never had either until a few days ago, so you never know what you might find yourself doing down the road…
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Another Post That John Wanted Me To Name Stool Boom
Here’s why John likes to name things Stool Boom. Anyway, a while back I redid a stool that wasn’t ours. It just showed up in the mail and I spruced it up. More on the mysterious mail thing in a minute. First here’s how I got ‘er done. This is a terrible before shot, but picture an old beat up periwinkle blue stool with nails and holes and a rotting wood top:
The first thing I did was get all the old nails out with the back of a hammer:
Then I primed it and painted it a rich navy color (I just grabbed a $3 test pot of paint in Benjamin Moore’s Santa Monica Blue). Ignore the crazy-bright blue color going on in this picture – it’s a very strange camera trick. In real life = navy. Anyway, after my two coats of paint were dry, I dug up some extra loft batting (originally from JoAnn) that I already had and some fabric that I had around as well. Why? Because I’m cheap. And it’s not my stool. Haha. If you’re keeping track, so far, I had sunk $3 into someone else’s stool.
Then I got fancy and picked up two $1.79 boxes of decorative nail heads (from JoAnn). I know, I splurged. What can I say, I’m a giver.
I figured I could use these guys to secure my batting and my fabric along each side of the stool. So I just cut the batting and the fabric about two inches larger than the top of the stool on all sides, and pulled the excess down and folded it under for a nice clean line. Then I tapped each nail head into place to keep things secure. I spaced them about 2″ apart (and used a 2″ piece of cardboard as a spacer to keep the gaps consistent). About thirty taps later I had done one side…
I continued to tap my way around the other three sides and I was left with a sweet little stool to not call my own. Total cost: $6.58. Except I have no earthly idea why she looks royal blue again. See the pics above – that’s probably the most true that the blue looks. So it’s a nice rich color but not too bright in real life.
Here’s a full shot from the side (the same pic I should have taken as a before instead of a zoomed in crazy one):
Then I hugged her, kissed her (more than once), and lovingly sent her off. Sniffle. Weird stool business going on, right?
Well, it was actually for the fine folks at Do It Yourself magazine…
… where we have a Q and A column called “He Said, She Said“…
… but in our column we don’t redo furniture, so the stool was for another article they were running in their winter issue about makeovers by a few bloggers who all received surprise items in the mail to redo. There were some pretty amazing fellow bloggers in the mix, like: Style Me Pretty, Centsational Girl, Jen Geigley, Renegade Handmade, and Lori Andrews. It was really fun see what they did, like this two-tiered-table turned cake stand from Style Me Pretty:
And here’s my little stool makeover. I love how they styled it with yarn because of all the craft stuff that I have in our house, I have zero yarn. Haha.
Oh and really savvy folks might even recognize the fabric as one of the ones we used for Clara’s weekly pictures. We love how it looks like water and the bean looks like she’s swimming in this pic.
After making her quilt and birthday banner there was still more than enough for a surprise stool makeover. Gotta love it. What furniture have you guys been making over lately? Any painting or reupholstering going on? And kiddos swimming around on fabric? Hey, if it makes ‘em happy…
Psst- We might be biased, but we think this video of Clara singing a medley of songs is the cutest thing ever. That girl loves to sing!
Clara’s Christmas Kitchen!
We did it. Holy cats, we did it.
Just a few days before Christmas we started Clara’s homemade play-kitchen (in secret of course, since she thinks Santa brought it)… and we actually finished it on Christmas Eve! Yes folks, it was a Christmas miracle. We went into it with a goal of spending under $99 since this basic play-kitchen from Ikea is that price – but we wanted to add a bit more detail like oven knobs that actually turn, an oven light that goes on and off, a wire baking rack inside the oven instead of a shelf, and a real faucet (not plumbed of course, but movable!).
So here’s how we made our own little Clara version in the last 72 hours before Christmas, for what ended up being $74…
More pics in a moment (lots more!), but first the dirty details. The core of our homemade kitchen was initially going to be a real kitchen cabinet, so we had it around already (yessss!). It was actually the one we bought for $14 from the Habitat For Humanity ReStore when we intended to hang a big microwave next to our pantry. Heck, we even hung it temporarily when determining where we wanted the electrician to add our microwave plug a while back.
But in the end it never got used (since we opted for a smaller microwave – more on that here) so we hung onto it in preparation for its eventual rebirth as a play kitchen.
It was a little low (only 15″) so we began by building it up on the bottom with a quick box made out of a 1 x 4″ remnant that we had in the basement. We offset it from the front a bit so it would even look like a real base cabinet in a kitchen (toekick and all).
John also had a spare 1 x 12″ board in his scrap wood pile that, when paired with a leftover plank from our desk-building project, fit perfectly as a counter and low backsplash. Well, perfectly once they were cut down a bit.
Picture me rubbing my hands together maniacally and saying things like “it’s all going according to plan!”
But before attaching all that, we had to build our sink area. We hit up the ReStore again and snagged a real faucet and handle for $10 (and inadvertently crashed their company Christmas party in the process – sorry ReStorians, thanks for letting us quickly grab that faucet!). We thought those two real kitchen features paired with a metal bowl (found at Target for $7) would make for a purty chrome and stainless steel kitchen sink area. Only the best for our girl. Haha.
After tracing around the lip of the bowl, John jigsawed a hole just inside the line (so the edge of the bowl had something to rest on). It didn’t have to be perfect since the bowl would be covering it.
After cutting matching holes in both the counter and the cabinet top (and sanding them both smooth), the bowl was officially transformed into a sink – just by dropping it in.
I wish I had peeled that sticker off for this pic, but you get the idea.
Adapting the sink hardware was also pretty straightforward. The faucet was pretty much ready to go, but the handle had lots of tubing that was just going to be in the way under the counter.
Luckily, with a wrench and a copper pipe cutter we removed the excess mumbo jumbo. Oh, and since the bottom of the fixture will be concealed between the top of the cabinet and the counter we don’t have to worry about Clara messing with it.
Then it just took drilling some holes…
…and securing both fixtures to the underside of the counter (though the handle was so thick it required an extra block of wood to keep it secured).
Now that we could finally secure the counter to the cabinet, it was starting to look like a play kitchen! So yes, this is where we got all weird / annoying / giddy / hyper.
But just wait, there’s more excitement in store. Check this out…
Every play kitchen needs an oven right? So we bought some $3 fence hinges to convert one door to open downwards.
And we also snagged a piece of pre-cut plexi from Home Depot (for just $3!) so that we could give Clara’s oven a proper window (the girl’s gotta check on her souffles). We completely lucked out that this pre-cut pane was the perfect size.
We weren’t so lucky when cutting the hole for the plexi though. John can’t figure out if it’s him or his Dremel Trio, but he has trouble getting straight cuts sometimes (his words, not mine). It looked okay from a distance…
…but up close he was less than happy with it. Yes, there may have even been some hushed cursing.
So after a dash to the craft store (we had to buy materials for some oven knobs anyway) we grabbed some thin pieces of craft wood and cut a miniature frame to trim out the imperfect opening. Huzzah for Plan B!
We didn’t want to actually attach the plexi until we were done priming and painting, so it was onto making some knobs for the oven. I guess knobs are usually for a stove, but we figured it wouldn’t hurt to have something for Clara to spin and interact with. So we took some small wood discs from Ben Franklin (for $2) and drilled a hole in the center for a washer and bolt.
Luck was back in our favor when it came to drilling holes for the nut on the back of the oven door. The Kreg Jig drillbit (which has a small pilot drill on the tip before becoming larger) made the perfect sized holes for not only sinking the nut into the door (since our oven wouldn’t close if they weren’t flush) but also kept the nuts from spinning too, which made attaching everything really easy.
Final attachment of the knobs wouldn’t happen ’til after painting, but here’s a preview (check out the assembled one on the left). John used some of the leftover craft wood (that he had from the Plan B oven window frame) to cut some little arrows that would later get glued over the bolt head on each knob. But back to these in a minute.
Now that everything was constructed, we snuck it upstairs to the sunroom after Clara was asleep and primed the whole darn thing (after patching some holes with wood putty). It was actually not that bad since we were in priming and painting mode for our real kitchen too. Then it was painting time, and we did all those finishing touches like gluing in the oven plexiglass and adding hardware over the next 48 hours.
The rest of the finishing touches are easier to explain while looking at the “after” kitchen, so through the magic of the Internet we’ll fast forward a bit:
We primed and painted it using leftover paint that we already had. The top is our kitchen wall color (Sesame by Benjamin Moore) and the base is the same stuff we used for our office cabinets (Benjamin Moore’s Advance paint in Decorator’s White in a satin finish). We painted the inside of the pantry Sesame also, but did the oven in a medium grey thanks to a test pot of paint that we had leftover from grey-washing our living room beams (in Benjamin Moore’s Shaker Gray). It’s sort of hard to see in the pics, but in person the gray oven and the grellow cabinet are fun little details to help each side feel more defined.
To dress up the inside of the oven we used heavy duty velcro to hold up a simple tap light, so Clara can actually “turn the oven on” just by pushing it. We also found this black wire shelf (it’s actually one of those bottom-of-the-sink drying trays) at Target for $5. It definitely helps things feel more oven-ish in there.
Oh, and here’s what the plexi-glass looks like from the back. We just used some clear silicone caulk to adhere it to the backside. That keeps it in place, but is totally invisible from the front thanks to the blessing-in-disguise frame that John had to add. Three cheers for happy accidents along the way.
We also whipped up a last-minute shelf on the sink side when we realized that most of the play food Clara was getting from her grandparents (they sweetly offered to give play-kitchen-themed Christmas gifts, knowing what we had up our sleeves) would be dwarfed by one big open cabinet. She’s got the basics covered… soup, cereal, crackers, pasta, tuna, sugar, milk (oh wait, maybe this girl needs a fridge someday…).
We opted not to add a stovetop so that she’d have more flexible-to-use-for-other-stuff-too counter space (you know, for mixing and setting out dishes, etc). It has already been a handy choice because there’s room to house the play toaster her Grammy and Tom-Tom bought her for Christmas (yes, it’s kind of the cutest thing we’ve ever seen). But I did make her a makeshift hot plate of sorts, so she has one burner to play with (instead of four space-hogging circles). What does she use it for? To fry sandwiches, apparently.
All that little DIY hot plate entailed was buying a $5 trivet from Bed Bath & Beyond and a $4 round of wood from Michael’s (which I painted teal with leftover paint from this project) and then drilled into it in three spots (to allow the feet of the trivet to “sink” inside the wood round so it was nice and solid). Then I used a flat washer and a screw to hold the trivet into the round of wood from the center. Voila: instant burner.
Oh and I used little felt furniture feet on the bottom of my burner (to lift it up ever so slightly to keep it from scratching the counter) which you can sort of see in the picture below.
Here’s a closer look at the final oven knobs too. I sprayed them with leftover spray paint (Rustoleum’s Titanium Silver that we bought to test on our old kitchen hardware). It’s not a perfect match to the new shiny chrome door hardware ($5 each from Home Depot) and our sleek sink and faucet, but it’s close enough. And it sort of glitters, which is semi-adorable (new rule: every play kitchen should have at least one glittering element).
We actually bought three of those Home Depot door handles so that one could act as a towel bar on the side of the sink. Little details like that were kind of my favorite part. As for hatching this whole kitchen plan, John and I took Clara and Burger for a nice long walk and chatted about things we could add to “our kitchen” (didn’t want to spoil the play-kitchen surprise for Clara) which is how we came up with things like the towel bar, the wire rack, the oven tap light, all the other little details like those spinning knobs that we thought would make it Clara’s favorite thing ever. The brainstorming part of a project is always my favorite. So much possibility…
So now I think you’ve see just about every nook and cranny of this puppy (can you tell we’re proud of it?)…
So how about a budget breakdown?
- Secondhand cabinet (from the ReStore): $14
- Secondhand faucet & handle (also from the ReStore): $10
- Stainless sink bowl (from Target): $7
- Oven knobs and frame (from Ben Franklin craft store): $5
- Hinges for oven door (from Home Depot): $3
- Pre-cut plexiglass and wood trim for oven window (from Home Depot): $4
- Wire oven shelf (from Target): $5
- Tap light for the oven (from Home Depot): $2
- Wood counter, backsplash, and toe kick: $0 (already owned scrap lumber, but it might be $15 or so to buy it all)
- Trivet (from Bed Bath & beyond) and wood round (from Michael’s) for hot plate: $9
- Three hardware handles for oven, cabinet, and towel bar (from Home Depot): $15
- Primer and paint for counter, cabinets, and hot plate: $0 (already owned, but a few $4 paint testers would do the trick if you needed to buy it)
- Miscellaneous wood pantry items (by Plan Toys): $0 (Christmas gift from Grammy and Tom Tom, but they might cost around $15 if you were to buy them)
- Play toaster (also by Plan Toys): $0 (another super thoughtful gift from John’s parents!)
- Total project cost: $74
And as they say in the commercials, watching Clara play with what Santa brought her: priceless.
If only a certain larger kitchen were this easy to knock out. Oh well, I guess that’s the difference between one cabinet and 20 of them. But I gotta say that this little guy is getting a ton of action. Stuffed animals regularly get bathed in the sink, fake slices of lettuce and tomato get toasted, boxes of cereal and crackers get baked in the oven, and random cars, balls, and trains get stuffed into the pantry cabinet. It’s also really nice to have a little “Clara zone” shaping up along the living room wall right off of the kitchen (we moved it to the wall on the left side of her new desk after Christmas). Good stuff.
Oh and oddly enough, folks ask us all the time what we want to “parlay” this blog-thing into, and for the past few years we’ve never really known how to answer that question because we love blogging as-is (we don’t want a TV show or anything – ack, that makes us break out in hives – so, we’ve actually turned those opportunities down a few times). But I can honestly say that “designing” Clara’s desk and her play kitchen have been hugely amazing and fun projects for both of us. So for once I might have an answer the next time someone asks what sort of side projects we’d love to end up doing in a decade or two (right along with the blog of course, since YHL = our first baby). Designing cute and affordable kid furniture (which seems to be surprisingly hard to find for some reason) might just be the sweet spot. Ya never know, right? So I’m just putting that out there into the universe. Who knows where we’ll end up…
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Can We Just Paint Some Darn Cabinets Already?
If your patience to see some painted cabinets is wearing thin – just imagine how we feel! When we were planning this kitchen project our big-picture brains said “We retrofit those few doors to match the rest of the room and then we paint. Hooray!” But now that we’re in the weeds (amid holiday madness, no less) we realize that a lot of stuff actually has to happen between those two steps.” There are gaps to be filled, rough spots to be sanded, trim to be added, hinges to be dealt with, hardware to be chosen, primer to be selected, a final paint color to be decided, etc, etc, etc.
First up, this goes under the category of trim: I wanted to rebuild the window sill and molding so that we could caulk / prime / paint it while we had everything out for the cabinets. And since our old sill was a piece of granite that matched our old counters (but we were very happy with a wood sill in our first house), I snagged a piece of pine board at Home Depot that would fit in the space and cut a couple of notches out of it.
Then I just slid and nailed it into place.
From there, it was the usual song and dance of cutting and nailing the trim casings around the edges. I even added a smaller piece underneath the sill to mimic what we had done on the half wall ledge.
Now that the window’s ready for caulk (to fill the small gaps at the corners), primer (for the raw sill) and white semi-gloss paint (to protect the wood and keep it all durable and wipe-abe) – it’s onto some other trim. Specifically, the toe-kick that goes around the bottom of the base cabinets. A lot of it got removed when we shuffled cabinets around. So in some places I was able to cut down/reinstall the leftover pieces.
But around the peninsula I needed to buy new stuff (since we added that to the layout). I actually couldn’t find any off-the-shelf toe kick trim (perhaps it was sold out due to last minute holiday DIYers like us?) and although I knew I could special order it through the Home Depot’s kitchen department, I didn’t have that patience. So I just bought some standard pre-primed baseboard that would fit under my peninsula cabinets and installed that. Since everything’s getting painted the same cabinet color, no one should be the wiser. Whew.
Oh, and since we’re still undecided on what treatment to give the back of the peninsula (worn wood? raised panels? we’ll keep you posted!), that’s why the toe-kick stops suddenly there on the right. I’ll cover up that raw end with whatever trim/wood we apply to the side and back. And although I did buy all of my shoe molding, I’m not installing that until after the new floors are done (we’ll prime and paint it before it goes in to avoid getting paint on the new cork floors).
But that wasn’t the end of my trim-venture. Check out the subtle unevenness when it comes to the bottom edge of that corner cabinet’s frame. See how it’s a tiny bit higher than the two cabinets surrounding it? Annoying, but not the end of the world. Fortunately it was exactly 1/2″ too high on each side, so I just bought 1/2″ pieces of pine craft wood and securely wood-glued them into place with clamps and glue boasting an especially heavy duty hold (there was no way I could fit a hammer or screwdriver under there). Once we putty, sand, prime, and paint it should be completely undetectable.
The only other trim we had planned to install at this point was some crown around the upper cabinets. But, believe it or not, we’ve kinda been digging the clean and modern look of just the sharp squared-off edges (we held some crown up against it and cringed, really- it just seems sleeker and cleaner without it and a bit too adorned with that stuff going on up there). So we’re gonna leave things alone for now and proceed without crown. But if we decide later that it’s missing something we’ll just add it after the fact (pre-primed and painted like the shoe molding so we won’t worry about ruining our cabinet paint job).
Oh and as for hinges, we considered hidden ones, but our doors are half-sunk (more on that here) so they have a very thin stepped down edge all around them (and since hidden hinges need to be routed in, our doors would be too thin around the edge so it wouldn’t work for us). No worries, there are plenty of awesome kitchens on Pinterest (according to my obsessed wife) with exposed hinges and great hardware – so we’re cool with them. So after moving on from hidden hinge research we thought we might be able to spray prime/paint the hinges that we had (since they’re pretty rare/hard to find and it would save us money) but we gave it a try with two different satin nickel finishes (we picked hardware- it just hasn’t come in yet- but it was nice to make that decision so we knew what exact finish our hinges should be)… and… it didn’t work.
See the hinge on the left? That’s a new hinge (one of the rare ones that actually work with our door- which we tracked down at a local hardware store called Pleasant’s with tons of extra options). And it’s in the exact finish we need to work with our hardware (which they also had in their store, just not enough of it to take home on the spot). Those other two hinges to the middle and right are the original ones from our kitchen after being sprayed with the two types of spray paint in the cans above them. See how they don’t look as smooth and satin-nickel-y… and look a bit stippled and – well, fake? And even worse, when you moved the hinge back and forth (which would happen a million times a day for the next few decades) the paint actually got worn off on the middle of the hinge:
So it didn’t work. But we’re happy we gave it the ol’ college try. Thankfully shelling out $90 for new hinges isn’t really much in the scheme of a full-on kitchen reno, and definitely worth a clean/fresh/new/functional look.
Oh and speaking of other decisions we’ve made, we’ve finally picked a cabinet color. As in, there’s no going back (we got it mixed and brought it home and everything). We were switching back and forth between pure clean white (we loved our white cabinets in our first house) and a soft warm gray or gray-beige color – but ultimately decided against anything too gray or gray-beige because:
- there’s so much gray on the walls of the dining room, the living room, and the hallway that a room in the middle of all of those spaces full of gray cabinets (especially when seen from the gray dining room since they’re so open to each other) might be too much
- our backsplash is a soft gray penny tile, so that’s a less severe way of adding that color to the room than putting it on every cabinet – plus the penny tile will really pop if the cabinets are lighter instead of too blendy
- painted cabinets in a tone of white feel the most classic to us – so we won’t worry that they’re trendy or “out” in a decade
But we didn’t actually go with a bright white color – so we sort of landed in the middle of the two camps. Here was our process:
#1. Pull a ton of swatches out to look at them with the counters and the backsplash tile and the rich dark cork floors (which will definitely keep the room from feeling too sterile and white-washed):
#2. Pick our favorites of the bunch and place them on the plane that they’ll live on (ex: sit them vertically against the cabinets to see how they read vertically since that’s how the color will be seen). Oh and the backsplash tile is there too for our reference.
# 3. Study those colors in the morning, noon, and night (and on a sunny and cloudy day – just to be thorough) and slowly eliminate swatches until we were left with our four finalists:
#4. Realize that we probably can’t go wrong with any of them so just go with our gut (our favorite swatch all along- yes, from the very beginning, was the one second from the right). It’s called Cloud Cover and although the picture above hardly does any of them justice, it’s basically not a bright white (which you can see represented by the bright white counter under it) but it’s sort of a very very very light gray- but it’s a warm gray. Sort of the lightest greige in the world that would look like a soft white from afar but as you get closer and see the bright white counter it’ll be clear that it’s not completely white and a bit moody and tonal. So yeah, it’s safe to say we’re so excited and can’t wait to see how bright and glossy and clean our new kitchen is going to look once those cabinets slip into their new “wardrobe” and our floors get the rich cork treatment to keep it from light/white/bright overload. You know, like this inspiration room from here (except add grellow walls and open shelves full of colorful things and metal pendant lamps and stools and maybe even a wood peninsula base, which will make ours a bit less white):
And speaking of getting to the cabinet painting finish line, here’s a quick breakdown of our steps:
- Remove doors, drawer fronts, and hardware
- Remove everything from our cabinets
- Use wood putty to fill any lingering gaps, seams, and holes (like where the old knobs were since our new hardware won’t be placed the same way)
- Sand dried putty as well as any ridges, scrapes, chips, or other dings that our cabinets have collected over the years to get them as smooth as possible.
- Sand all cabinet doors (front and back) as well as all cabinet frames to rough them up before priming (some folks skip sanding, we want these babies to last forever so we’re not taking any chances)
- Clean up all the sanding mess to ensure that we don’t get dust in our primer
- Use a liquid deglosser on all cabinet doors and frames to be extra sure they’re ready for primer
Buy hardware and finalize hinge plan- Prime (hopefully one coat, depending on what kind of primer we end up getting – still have to talk to a paint pro and decide)
- Paint (we’re hoping that two coats on each side of the doors and the frames give us enough coverage, knock on wood)
- Let everything dry and cure for 3-5 full days (at least that’s what the paint can said the last time we did this- and we followed that to the letter)
- Drill holes for and install new hinges and hardware
- Reinstall all doors and drawers
- Restock the kitchen with all the stuff we took out of our cabinets/drawers
- Take a long nap (preferably for 2-3 days, Clara permitting)
- Take after photos (preferably 500, from every last angle)
Man, just typing that out made me tired. But we’re trying to be thorough because we want our paint job to be clean, even, and durable. As in a-couple-of-decades durable. So even though it will take us extra days going through all of the prep, we think it will be well worth it in the end. It’s actually looking like we’ll be priming and painting during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Which means we should have 500 after pictures for you in early January. Woot. We can’t begin to tell you how excited we are to have “new” cabinets for the new year!
Oh but if you’re dying for a before & after rightthissecond, here’s an equally thrilling much less exciting one for ya. This is what our sunroom (aka our kitchen reno storage room) looked like recently.
We were basically hoarding every scrap from the demo process “just in case” we needed it to rebuild cabinets or complete the peninsula. But now that it’s clear what cabinet, doors, and trim we needed – and, more importantly, what can go – we did a big clean up. And now it looks like this:
We brought all of the usable cabinet scraps out into the carport to be donated to a local thrift store (one of our local favorites, Diversity Thrift, came right to our door to pick them up on Monday). Then all of the smaller pieces of wood got tossed into my scrap pile in the basement. There might have been some general tidying too… like putting my tools away properly.
Oh, and notice those big planks of spare plywood resting on the couch and the daybed?
Welcome to our makeshift cabinet door wood puttying / sanding / priming / painting zone (we’ll just lay some drop cloths under the plywood to protect the couch and the daybed first). We figure the sunroom is a good place to spread out and get work done (while keeping things off limits to Clara, and keeping the fumes out of the house – even though we’ll be using low and no-VOC stuff). So expect a lot of pictures taken in here in the coming days.
Maybe I should’ve added “prep sunroom work area” to our list so I could have another thing crossed off. Well, make that two other things…
Yup, the cabinet doors, drawer fronts, and hardware have been officially removed. Oh, and since we emptied the cabinets (mostly) I guess that makes another things off our list. Looks like we’re on a roll.
Prep sunroom work areaRemove doors, drawer fronts and hardwareRemove everything from our cabinets
Only fifteen more to go. Let’s just say it’s a good thing my parents are hosting the official Christmas dinner…
… although we do have four relatives staying with us for the holiday weekend. Thankfully they’ve come to expect nothing less than chaos whenever they come over. They even claim to look forward to seeing what we’re up to. Now that’s unconditional love. Update: although the chair covers look different in the pic above (not sure why) we haven’t dyed or changed them out, so they’re still the same mocha color – for now…
What are you guys doing this week and next? Any big projects? Big meals? Big presents? Big lists?
Psst- We’re over on BabyCenter talking about Clara’s favorite books/toys/songs/activities for anyone looking for last minute toddler gift ideas of something to do with their little ones over the holidays. You can find it all here.
The Doors
We knew from the moment that we decided to add new (secondhand) cabinets to our kitchen that the doors could be a challenge. Even though we only ended up with 5 missing doors, it was important that we get those to match with the rest of the kitchen for a seamless look (aka: so no one would look around and guess we had some mismatched thrift store cabinets among us). Here are the five doorless cabinets that we had to address:
We knew we had a few options to result in a kitchen full of matching doors, so one of them was bound to work. Here they are (in order of expense from most to least):
- Getting all new doors and drawer faces for the entire kitchen
- Ordering custom-made matching doors for just the few cabinets missing them
- Try to cut-down/repurpose leftover doors from the old cabinets that we’re no longer using (remember we took a bunch down here)
We actually investigated Option #1 first, because we do love a shaker style door (like the ones we chose for our last kitchen below):
But as we started adding up the cost (best on a few different sources, from Home Depot to online door-making warehouses) and it started to look like it’d be upward of $2,000-3,000. So yeah…. next option?
Happily, option #2 was substantially less expensive. Our challenge here is that we have a very specific cabinet style. They’re extremely solid well-built custom oak cabinets and doors (which is nice – and we’re happy to have them)… but being custom means they’re a bit unusual (aka: haaard to find). They’re actually framed cabinets (i.e. there’s a small lip on the front of the cabinet box) and are partial inset doors (meaning part of them sit within the frame, part sit on top of the frame). This makes for an awesome seal that fits together amazingly (like one big puzzle) but it also makes hoping to somehow “find” matching doors in our custom style/size/depth virtually impossible.
As for buying new ones “to order” in specific sizes that we request, no one that we dropped in on sold partial inset doors with the same detailing on the front (and we couldn’t use non-partial-inset doors because those would stick out about a half-inch more from the cabinet when closed, so they’d be really obvious and weird looking among the rest).
So next we called up the original manufacturer of the cabinets (a private company out of Pennsylvania called “Quaker Made” who specializes in custom cabinetry). They patched me through to an independent repair guy who makes new doors, so I gave him rough measurements and he quoted me about $800 to make new doors. Not bad, but a bit more than we were hoping to spend… especially when we had so many extra doors laying around. Including these five that were perfect candidates for being re-fitted.
It kinda seemed stupid of us not to at least try to make these work first. If our attempt failed, we could always go to Option #2 as a back-up. And you know we like to work with what we have. So yeah, cue the power tools.
All of the doors were too big for their new cabinet-y homes, so we knew we had to cut them down. Cutting them down wasn’t going to be as straightforward as just slicing off the extra inches since I needed to maintain the raised border and the raised inner panel on each door (along with the inset edge around the perimeter). That meant I need to shave off the extra inches from the middle of the doors. Yikes.
To get super straight cuts, I used my table saw. For anyone wondering, our table saw of choice is this Skil one for $150, which we really like… maybe a little too much).
Two cuts later, I had removed a section from the middle and was left with two halves that would create the perfect door length.
To secure the halves together, I made some pocket holes with one of my other BFF tools (my Kreg jig)…
…then I carefully clamped them together before screwing everything tightly to secure them. I also use wood glue for the strongest possible hold, but I wipe the excess right away with a rag to keep things looking neat, which is why you don’t see it gushing out from the seam in this pic:
Now, for the doors above the fridge I had to repeat this cut-jig-screw step the other direction too, since the spare door was both too tall and too wide. Yup, I totally Frankensteined those babies.
But once it was all screwed together again (and the hinges were reattached), things were actually fitting together much better than I expected (full disclosure: I completely thought this method would flop, but it was still worth a try just in case it ended up saving us $800).
Now I know what some of you are thinking – because I was thinking the same thing: this isn’t looking so hot. But I reminded myself that once we add in some wood putty and sand those babies ’til they’re seamless we should be in ok shape. And once we use nice thick self leveling primer and paint, even things like the wood grain – and hopefully those hairline cracks should be undetectable (we used self leveling paint on the oak office cabinets that we painted and the wood grain doesn’t show through at all). Oh yeah, and we’re definitely moving the knob to a less awkward place (replacing it with new hardware actually)….
…and we’ll use wood putty to fill the screw holes in the back (it’s looking pretty treacherous back there).
I probably made this process seem faster and easier than it really was. It took me all morning to do these two doors (and a third test door that I messed around with first to see what worked and what didn’t before moving on to a door that matters). And there weren’t just two cuts per door – there were definitely a few trims and recuts along the way to make sure things fit snugly, but not too snugly thanks to that inset-back edge.
The microwave cabinet door was easier, since I was reusing the door that originally went on that once-taller cabinet. So it just took cutting a few inches out of the middle to make this door work.
This one only took me an hour-ish to do. Progress! The reason even one cut takes so long is that I measure and remeasure and very nervously make my cuts on the conservative side (since you can always shave more off but it’s a lot harder to add stuff back in).
That progress got derailed a bit when I faced the corner cabinet. This secondhand cabinet came with bi-fold doors, but those hidden hinges wouldn’t work for our partial inset doors (which meant if we tried to use them those doors would stick out at least a half-inch more from the frame than the rest of the doors in our kitchen – which would look terrible). So we debated installing a pie-cut lazy susan and just affixing the doors directly to that (kinda like the one in our other corner cabinet across the way), but nixed that idea because after a bit of thought we decided one base cabinet with a lazy susan was enough for us – and we were actually enjoying all of the wide open space for bigger items (which would be lost if we sliced things up by adding a lazy susan).
But before I could even start dealing with the doors, I had to fix these notches that were cut out of the frame to accommodate the old hinges.
After a few tries, I finally was able to jigsaw a couple of pieces that fit into the notches (not perfectly, but wood putty thankfully covers a multitude of sins when you’re painting your cabinets). I just screwed them into place and was happy to finally have a place to attach my hinges (which will all be removed again for our wood-puttying and sanding step down the road – and most likely sprayed a new color to match our new hardware).
What we ended up doing with the door was the simplest solution that we could come up with using what we had: two separate doors, hinged on opposite sides.
It took me the rest of the afternoon (plus part of the next morning) to get these to finally fit right, but you can see how they open below. The left door has a knob (that’s very awkwardly placed – which we’ll move) to open that side first. And once that door is open we can easily pull the other one open afterwards. We love that they still give us complete access to the wide shelves inside. Makes us very happy we didn’t go the lazy susan route since we already have one of those in another corner.
In the end, it definitely took longer than I hoped it would (mostly because of lots of noodling and trimming) but I think it came out pretty good. Everything fits. Everything closes nicely. And, once it’s all wood puttied / sanded / primed / painted, everything should look pretty much as good as new.
And, of course, if we don’t like how they look once they’re painted we can always call up the guy who’ll make us new doors for 800 beans if we have to (it’s not worth having a semi-ugly door situation to feast our eyes on every day in our new kitchen to save $800, so if it comes to that we’ll get ‘er done).
As for durability, joining solid oak doors with nails or glue alone would be a recipe for disaster – but making pocket holes and using heavy duty metal screws meant for the job along with wood glue is the permanent, strong, professional way to go (I like to do my research so things don’t fall apart later, which only adds up to more work for us). So there’s zero flex in the newly joined doors – they don’t close oddly or feel wiggly. They’re solid – and should function exactly the same way that our other solid oak doors do for the long haul.
As you can imagine, now we’re even more excited to get these suckers painted. Especially now that I’ve got all these ugly cuts that I want to hide going on. If only I didn’t have to do stuff like add toe-kick molding and other miscellaneous trim first. Although I did already add a new window sill and window trim (more on that later).
If we’re being realistic, it’s unlikely that we’ll get a painted cabinet update to you before Christmas in ten days (puttying and sanding and drying times for primer/paint would make that kinda impossible). But maybe we’ll recruit Santa to help us sand and prime when he drops down that chimney in 10 days. Sigh. If only these things could happen while we slept. Can you imagine how sweet that would be?
