An ALMOST new kitchen/Why I've been away

When Mark and I moved in together I bet he had NO idea what he was getting himself into!  I like changing my "space" and I like DIY type projects.  Actually I don't really like DIY as much as I like saving my money and doing what I can myself and leaving the harder projects to the pros ;-)  I've been checking out blogs, on line articles and asking my friends lots of questions about painting cabinets...because our needed a new look.  They were in fairly good shape but they just looked old and out dated and made the kitchen seem dark.  I changed the counters the first year I lived here but that didn't fix the dark look...I painted the walls and then had the walls re-painted (thanks little sister) but that didn't fix the darkness...The floors came next and still the kitchen was not what I wanted.  I knew it was the cabinets but I didn't want to have to paint those suckers.  Finally after much talk and me dragging my feet for over a year I decided what-the-heck.  I had the time off so I might as well get it done and over with!

Found an old picture of the DARK cabinets

First I removed all the doors, sanded and cleaned all of our doors, primed them, painted them, covered them with a sealer and finally Mark rehung them for me.  This process took a couple weeks total.  That was due to the fact that 1.  You can't prime or paint but so many coats in one day.   2.  I was still working part time so had to actually go do that.   3.  We ARE the Busy Bryants so life didn't stop just because I threw our kitchen into chaos. 

A couple things I will just put out there...I used Kilz Premium primer on everything that I was going to paint, I used Behr paint from Home Depot but a Sherwin Williams color (Alabaster) for my paint and I covered everything finally with many (many) coats of Deft Aerosol Sealer.  I used the same door handles as before but did change the hinges.  The hinges ended up being the part I called Mark in on ;-)

For the final thing I did add a new piece to the kitchen...a center cart for more storage.  Already had one but it was smaller/darker.

During the chaos

After :-)

There are still a few things that will get changed.  Like a new sink, a back splash, and stainless steel fridge/stove to match the microwave and dishwasher.  But I'm in no rush to tackle those things just yet!  Since the kitchen was getting so much attention the rest of the house felt neglected.  So I did a few minor things to change up the rest of the house.  I'll share that tomorrow.