Drab to FAB!

Meet Drab as Drab.

I just want you to imprint this kitchen in your mind..

First thing first we have wanted to redo the kitchen for a LONG time. It was something we have discussed continually Kelly finally told me that he would do it this winter. I can't tell you home much I begged him to get started on it. Like usual I already had every detail I wanted to be added to this kitchen from the color of paint all the way to light fixtures and all the extra moulding and trim work. 

Kelly didn't know it but he was in for it.

First thing first when redoing any furniture or cabinetry is removing the gloss.. you may think well I don't want to sand and have all that mess in my house... I'm here to tell you we didn't do ANY SANDING! What?! We used Rustoleum Deglosser from their cabinetry transformation kits. My mom had used their kits several times in her own house so she let us use a couple of her left over bottles. 

I wiped off all the cabinets, toe kicks, doors, drawers, tops and sides, shelves everything! Then once we took off the doors we spent one night deglossing the cabinets. With a brillo pad and a damp rag you scrub off all the gunk front and back. I still feel like my hands hurt from scrubbing. But they were clean you could see the grain come back out and the water when we would rinse out the rag would be SUPER DIRTY! 

Of course that leads you to taking EVERYTHING out of your kitchen. I never realized how much stuff we had in those cabinets. Don't believe me... just look. 

I have to admit that I wanted to smack myself in the face several times for starting this just 2 days after CHRISTMAS! We didn't have anything cleaned up from that so on top of the gifts is my entire kitchen. 

Then we were ready to prep and start the painting. Kelly and I went to Home Depot and spent the gift card his work gave him for Christmas on paint. After a long discussion/argument in the paint section we finally agreed on a paint. Kelly was thinking we were going for "cream" ... I was yelling "NO WAY!" ... Thankfully they have an awesome kiosk where you can scan any paint swatch and see it in a bedroom, bathroom or in our case a kitchen. So we finally walked out with the bright white paint! I was happy... Kelly was scared. (can't blame him)

We chose Behr Ulta Premium Satin with Primer in Polar Bear!

We got to work the next morning with taking the microwave down and going to Wheelwright and grabbing the trim work. Kelly was dead set that he could go without me... I told him no way once again. I was going to pick it out. As we were looking at different moulding I showed him the 4 1/2 inch and said we are getting this. He said thats too big you really want that... I remember rolling my eyes and saying "I know what I want". We then got the couple sheets of beadboard and were headed home. As we were headed home we got stopped at a light... as we went to take off the crown moulding flew out the back!!! You're kidding! Kelly flipped the truck back around and we watched a garbage truck drive right over it... breaking it in half! .. I remember thinking what did we get ourselves into.. We couldn't salvage any of it so we went back and bought the same stuff once again since it was our longest length that was destroyed.

The 10 step process:

1- Cleaning & Taking out everything out of cabinets

2- Deglossing everything

3- Trim work added 

4- Painting everything

5- Antiquing everything

6- Adding Hardware

7- Sealing everything

8- Taking out old countertops & installing granite, new faucet

9- Installing Tile Backsplash & quarter round to toe kick

10- New outlets install

But everything soon got better. I mean just with the trim work I was all giddy.

Before you take your cabinet doors off you need to label the hinges to match the door so you know where to put them back. That was done by Kelly in a letter system for all the top cabinets and the bottom ones were done with numbers.

THEN IT WAS TIME FOR PAINT!

Check out the drawer transformation. Our drawer faces were really weird. They were not able to come off or believe me we would have taken them apart but it would have ruined them. So they had to painted in their bulky age. We also just did the fronts of them white. 

Antiquing! This was like the funnest part. Probably because it meant we were that much closer.. My awesome brother in law Chris told me about a stain pen he had bought for when he finished his basement. So after looking and finally deciding what I wanted done we went back to Home Depot. (We lived there and Lowes). It is made by Minwax. They have lots of different color options. Its a felt tip marker. The oddest part is I didn't think it would smell like stain but it totally did. Which wasn't a problem just freaked me out. We used Dark Walnut also because all the different edges that we antiqued we went through 3 markers. 

We drew the line around the whole edge we wanted colored then I took a Qtip and put it under my tongue for just a second then I drug it around the edges. This helped fill in the entire lip and evenly distribute. It took about 10 minutes for each cabinet door to complete all the antiquing. I then sat them up on the microwave before completing them to see if I really liked them. 

Hinges & Spray Paint:

This was one of the only parts of the project that I was hoping would work out. We had our hardware for our cabinets already (note: our cabinets never had hardware on them before so it made it easy to pick out with out having to go with already having drilled holes). I took the hardware into Home Depot once again and matched it to the flat burnished amber spray paint. I also had read up enough on spray painting hinges with this type of spray paint that it would need a clear coat as well. 

I then took all the hinges out to the driveway laid them out on a piece of cardboard took the painters tape off of them and stuck the tape next to the hinge. I also was nervous that if a lot of over spray happened we wouldn't know where it needs to be at in the kitchen so I also took a sharpie marker and wrote the number next to it as well. 

After a couple hours of drying between the 2 coats of spray paint and 2 coats of clear we were ready to assemble them. 

As we were spray painting we were also using a clear coat on everything from the moulding and top of cabinets down to the toe kick. We did fronts and backs of all the doors just once. Then once we put all the hinges back on and had them hung we did the second coat of clear coat on everything in the kitchen. 

Its important to use a polyurathane that has great reviews on not yellowing. A lot of polycrilics and urethanes can yellow you don't want your white cabinets to turn to a pale yellow over time. We used the Rustoleum Sealer that was in my moms left over Cabinet transformations. 

HARDWARE TIME!

One night I got home and Kelly was almost done drilling and installing all the hardware on to the cabinets. I couldn't believe the difference. It was nuts! We got the hardware from my brother in law as well since it was cheaper for him to buy a ton of these when he was doing his basement.

Lighting.

Remember how I said we had talked about this makeover for a long time. This light sparked a lot of what I had wanted and it fit in with everything else. This light is from Lowes for $120. I don't love flourescent lighting.. its a dated concept. But I knew I couldn't get Kelly to do can lighting or anything so an updated light is better than the oak one we had previously. 

I had talked about different lights for over the sink. Kelly didn't agree with me for a long time but after some time spent talking to my sister and searching online for hours. I had a couple options. The problem was they were from Ikea. If you know Kelly you know one thing he hates IKEA and Target. Mainly because they are the two things that his wife loves. So I showed him some lights from IKEA I was sly about it trying to block the logo so he wouldn't catch on. He actually picked out his light for $25. Mind you the lights that we liked that were similar to this were over a hundred at local stores.

Uh-oh. As Kelly was doing some touch up work under some of the drawers one night he didn't want all of them shut so they could dry. As he was under the lowest one he went to sit up and knocked his head on the edge. I was upstairs at the time all he said was "Maggie, I need your help." ... it was said in a complete non urgent tone to me I thought he probably needs a screwdriver in a couple minutes. Well I didn't hear him doing anything so I went downstairs and just saw feet laying on the ground and he wasn't responding to when I asked what he needed. I finally got him to roll over and there was blood everywhere. Because he was laying on his side it looked like it was coming from his scalp not his eyebrow. After he finally came back to consciousness I finally was able to ask what had happened and that I think he may need stitches. He then said he was fine and started to walk around the house. Then within 20 seconds he sat back down and said I don't feel good. I looked at him and said I wonder why your head is bleeding. Thank goodness for my brother in law Landon who gets fun questions all the time from our family I sent him a text and asked what we should do. After a late night drive to Kents we had the supplies for me to play doctor. We super glued him back together and he got to sport a cool bandaid for a couple days. 

GRANITE!

The white cabinets I was in love with the countertops not so much. We had spent a lot of time looking at different countertop options, getting bids and finding one we both liked and that the price was right as well. We finally went with Uba Tuba. Its a blackish brown granite that looks like someone dropped something heavy on and cracked it. Its a popular granite after a few hours of them coming to install it we were left with a stellar kitchen. I remember thinking it can't get any better than this right! 

I was so thankful to see this sink & faucet out of my life. The sprayer would spray
without being pushed and it would get stuck on all the time. 

We also got a new 60/40 sink and a Krauss faucet that you can see here. 

Tile! This was the ALMOST Final step! Kelly and I also spent a lot of time debating what backsplash to do. I have liked the Subway Glass tiles and Kelly liked things that I didn't think went with the kitchen and feel of our house. So we went and looked. We finally walked away with something that made us both happy. I got glass tile I wanted and Kelly picked out and found the deco strip that matched perfectly. 

After a long Saturday and some help from a couple friends/co workers Todd & Mike got our kitchen looking stellar. Kelly over engineered some of it but he enjoyed learning how to do tile. He definitely has a knack for learning to do everything. It bugs him that he had to pay someone to come do granite because I think if he could have he would have done it himself. 

Mike showed Kelly this ingenious idea so the tiles don't sag while they set up with the Mastik you screw in a 2x4 and they won't move. Cool right! 

The first two rows of Subway tile went by quickly but the deco was harder with having to cut around the outlets. After we got done with the deco strip we were running to Lowes to get some grout and more mastik. We also stopped on the way and took Mike out to dinner for helping us all night.

Kelly stayed up that night until 2 am putting up all the tile! I fell asleep he told me the next morning he was just a couple short of finishing. So after he got what we needed we waited a couple of days. Kelly then spent one whole night grouting and finishing up the tile! Doesn't it look stellar with the light gray grout?

We also changed all of the outlets & light switches in the kitchen and dining room. They were a pale tan color before as you could see in other pictures. I never realized how much a backsplash would make the kitchen look finished but it adds so much!

All in all I am so happy with the way it turned out I can't even believe the difference it makes to our entire house. 

BEFORE (June 2012 Summer we were married)

AFTER (March 2016)

So you tell me did it go from Drab to Fab! 

The total round up of costs was about $3,200 that is including the granite. 

3 months of working on it and lots of pizza and a few stops to Fiiz later we finished it!

We also added granite into our two bathrooms upstairs as well. 

I wish I could have helped out more throughout the project but I got to be a mom and watch from the sidelines. Although Charli was an angel for most of the project watching us work while she would play. 

For Christmas Kelly and I decided we had bought ourselves Christmas in October when he got a new shotgun and I got an Apple Watch. Well he also surprised me with redoing my kitchen and as much as he said "We won't get anything else for Christmas..." ... I think he forgot but I'm not going to complain because I got a gorgeous kitchen out of it! Thank you Kelly! 

You will find me and Kelly late at night just staring from the stairs at this kitchen I don't know if its shock that we did all this together or if we are just that stinking proud of it. But if I had do describe love that would be Kelly. He put up with my diva like attitude throughout the last 3 months. Several times I told him 'I'm the designer and contractor you are my worker who does it all for me.' I do love working on projects with him and bouncing ideas off of him and coming up with solutions to tiny problems. As much as we say we will never do this to another kitchen again after all the "sweat equity" we did. I'm sad to see this project end. But hoping to just enjoy it and relax for a little while. 

Who we kidding we already have another project we are talking about.