Finished Kitchen Renovation

 When we left off on the last kitchen post, I had shown you the new lights, door trim, barn door, baseboards, and wood topped pedestal table.  

I'll start with the table.  I needed to do a clear, protective coat on it since it's wood.  I had a can of wipe on poly in my garage that I have no recollection buying or what I had planned on using it for or how long I'd had it.  It made me so nervous to use it on the table top that I had just about gotten to the color that I wanted it to be and didn't want to ruin it if this poly didn't work.  So it took me forever to just bite the bullet and get it done.  I mean, what's the worst that could happen?  It came out like crap and I'd need to re-sand it and re-stain it?  Again?  

Thankfully it worked perfectly- was super easy to use and looks awesome.  I ended up doing two coats, which you literally just pour onto a cloth and wipe on just like you would stain.  I let the first coat dry far longer than it said- which was for 2-3 hours.  I did probably 8 hours.  Then applied another coat.  It actually made the wood more brown- toned whereas without it, it was much darker, more black/brown. 

This is the before- without the poly.  

And this is with the poly. The first below is without the light on right above it for equal comparison.  

 Now that the table is checked off the list- let's talk about the wall color.  When I left you last- I had painted the walls the same white as the three rooms off of the kitchen.  

You guys already know where I'm going with this I'm sure.  I couldn't do it.  I couldn't have white walls in my kitchen.  Don't get me wrong- I do love this color.  If I'd have gone with a darker color for the countertops, I would have kept this color.  Everything in the kitchen besides the lower cabinets and table was the same white.  So waist up- all white.  WHITE.  And all the same color white.  So door trim, baseboards, doors, upper cabinets, and walls- ALL THE SAME WHITE.  Throw in the white countertops and backsplash- and it was way too much.  On top of it being too much, for the amount of money I paid for and hassle I had with the counters- I wanted them to POP.  I wanted everyone to see exactly what they looked like and how gorgeous they are.  Not have them blend in with literally everything in the kitchen.  Here is the cabinet and counter side of the kitchen.  Pay no attention to the cabinets yet.  Just the primer/white on the uppers, white walls, and white counters to get my point.  

So what now?  I was hesitant to do another light gray because the previous light gray was way too icy-blue.  I didn't want a color whatsoever.  So it really had to be gray.  Off to Menards I went in search for the perfect light, barely there, gray.  And I found it. 

Now that all was right with the walls- I needed to finish the uppers.  I had two coats of primer on them and decided to hang them back up because at this point, I was OVER the kitchen reno and I wanted my house back.   If I at least got them up off of every available surface of my downstairs, I wouldn't feel so scattered.  Up they went, and weeks went by without me doing anything to them.  But let's talk about the cabinets doors!  

This is the last big project that we did when my dad and aunt were here.  The doors I had were almost like a shaker door but not really.  There was this god awful beveled trim piece inside the "shaker" part.  It was far too ornate looking for me.  Simple is my style.  I hated them.  Then add in painting and sanding them multiple times, the door faces were really starting to look pretty tragic.  

I can't afford new kitchen cabinets with doors that I loved.  So the solution was making new doors and keeping the existing cabinets.  Cabinets were sanded and painted the new white for the uppers and black for the lowers which was no biggie for me.  Been there, done that, have multiple t-shirts.  But new doors?  Could I do that?  

One Sat I asked my dad- "So Dad, how difficult would it be...... blah blah blah new doors?"  He was like, "Yeah, no."  I sent over a bunch of tutorials and showed him that it should be pretty straight forward.  He then was like, "Yeah.  We can do it."  YAY!  Well he ended up getting a router bit to make the groove in the stiles and rails for the panel to slide in as well as a router bit to do the tongue that is on the ends of the rails that goes into the groove in the stiles.  

I went and bought a ton of red oak boards for the stiles and rails (the outer pieces of the cabinet doors- stiles are the left and right side pieces and the rails are the top and bottom pieces).  Then when they got here we went and got some red oak sheets of plywood for the panels (the inside board of the door).  

We started by using the bit to cut the groove in the boards that would become the stiles and rails.  I think it took me about 12-13 boards for all of the cabinet doors (also I did 4 add'l doors for my bathroom vanity- to be shown later).  We ripped every board with this bit first.  

You can see the groove that was cut out of the board in the above two photos.  That's where the panel slides into.  

Then we cut all of the boards to length for each of the cabinets.  This was my job to figure out.  Since you know, MATH!!!!  I had already measured all of the existing doors so I knew what I needed for height.  But then you need to figure out the width of the rails by taking off the measurements of the sides, but adding back in the "tongue" part on the rails.  It got complicated a couple of times.  But I figured it out.  

Which all this ended up turning into this below.  

I also had a sheet of paper that I can't find now that showed which stiles and rails we were cutting from which boards.  I did this to try an eliminate as much waste on the red oak boards as possibly.  Cuz them son of a bitches aren't cheap.  This part definitely got complicated but went very smoothly.  I grabbed the board that we were cutting based off the sheet and told my dad what measurement to cut.  Then I placed them in order on the floor by cabinet door letter.  You can kind of see the blue tape above each pile that listed which door it was.  This kept the process very organized in my mind.  

Once this process was done, my dad grabbed the Kreg jig that he bought to cut out the hole for the cabinet hinges.  Then did that for half of the stiles.  

Once all of that was done- we cut the panel to go inside the stiles and rails.  I didn't do a good job of taking pictures throughout this process.  But we cut the panels, slid them into the groove that we cut out with the router bit and clamped and glued everything together and let them dry.  We had to do this in stages because I just didn't have enough room to have 19 doors laying flat all at once.  But once each set was dry, I'd take them inside and start priming them.  The bottom that were going black, I didn't bother with primer.  While primer was drying we started on the new faces for the drawers.  This we didn't do the stiles/rails part.  We just got a 1 X 6 red oak board and cut the length we needed based off of the previous drawer faces.  Then we got trim pieces that we cut to make the "shaker" look and glued and nailed them on.  

Back in May/June I started sanding the bottom cabinets and painted them the new black (Tricorn Black).  I tried to get as much done in advance of my family coming out here as I could.  That way- once the doors were done- the kitchen would basically be completed and they'd be able to see it done before they left.  Below is the gray that the cabinets were.  I definitely did this the hard way. I sanded the island, cleaned up, then painted the island.  Then moved to the cabinets and did the same thing.  I should have just sanded them all at the same time, cleaned everything up, then painted them all at the same time.  But I didn't know if I'd have enough time with my schedule and trip to MA coming up so I wanted to get each one started and finished before I went to the next set of cabinets.  Probably took me longer in the end but it worked at the time.  

I also did the middle bank of cabinets where the sink is.  Once we had the doors and drawers done we installed with the new soft-closed hinges I bought.  These photos are all out of order.  But I painted the backs of the doors before installing so that I didn't need to paint around the hinges.  Once they were dry, we installed the hinges in the new holes and hung them.  Then I painted the fronts when they were hung.  I ended up needing to take them off after my family left to sand them and do the final coat.  But getting them onto the cabinets and off of every flat surface of my house was key.  And it made the kitchen start to look like a kitchen again.  No more seeing everything in the cabinets!  Yay! The below two photos are the drawers with the trim pieces we added I mentioned above.  

Then we installed the new handles I bought. 

Here is a close up of the new handles.  So pretty!  

My dad bought a jig for drilling the holes for the handles as well.  Made it a much easier project with the jig.  At this time we also made the doors for the master bathroom vanity since they were the same ugly old doors like the kitchen ones.  I went upstairs and sanded and painted the vanity and then once it and the doors were dry, I installed them as well.  It went from the gray/navy blue to the same Tricorn Black.  I also installed the same new handles that I got for the kitchen cabinets.  

I also added some trim to the end of the vanity to mimic the end of the kitchen cabinets as well.  Just gives it a more finished look.  

After my family had left and after I installed the upper doors and only had them primed, I took them back down and got to painting them so I could FINALLY finish the kitchen. Once they were dry I rehung them and used the same jig to drill the holes for the handles and installed them.  DONE!  Here are some more glamour shots of the full kitchen finished!

And the before photos!

What do you think???