My New-ish Kitchen Still in the Works

A kitchen project is such a pain huh?  Maybe it would not be if we could just order pizza in everyday.  Lets see, where to start.  The old cabin which was about to be burned down had this old kitchen in which was actually a good quality kitchen.  I am a big fan of restoring old, well built furniture.  You can often come up with a much nicer piece than if you would buy a cheapy new piece.  So our house had this wimpy kitchen in it and we decided to give the cabin kitchen a shot.  So one early spring day we hiked it up there with the box truck and picked up the old cabinets. 





In this picture you can see them, straight ahead of Nate. Pathetic I know.  I never took a good before shot.

We stripped them, sanded them, and primed them outside one beautiful Saturday.  It was hard work and we were tired by the time we were finished. 

The next free Saturday we had, Nate ripped out the bottom cabinets in our house and put the new ones in.  It was either get a cabinet made to fill the one spot or put a dishwasher there and we both voted for a dishwasher. 

Counter top in stock at  Home Depot.

I walked into my favorite paint store the next chance I got and said, "I want oil based paint for my kitchen cabinets" and to my shame I left him talk me right into latex paint. 
So after Nate had them installed I spent the next few days painting the doors on my kitchen table.  Not that much fun.  Very many thin coats of thick Latex paint.  This was time consuming.

Ok, so it looks like I was not actually working on the doors this day, but this is where it happened.

I finally got the doors finished to the bottom cabinets and Nate put them on.  So nice to have them on, but that is when I realized I was not happy with the Latex paint.  Nope.  My dear children with their grubby hands.  Well, even my dear Nathan for that matter, were giving me plenty of opportunity to wipe up after them and I could just tell that it was not going to hold up like my old cabinets.  which were painted with oil based paint.  So  I debated covering them with a polyurethane but decided to give them a coat or two of oil based.  Back to Sherwin Williams I went.  I was very cautious when it came to the bubbly paint salesman.  Didn't give him the slightest chance to talk me out of my oil based paint like he did the last time.  I was totally planning to tell him how disappointed I was with his previous paint suggestion, but it turns out I was in a very grouchy mood after my third eye exam for the month and decided I'd rather not mention it.

Oil based paint. My house smells terrible.  Fumes. What a pain to wash out the paint brush, wait way longer for the paint to dry, etc.  But I can tell I will be happier with this.  With the exception of the doors to the top of the kitchen, everything was all ready well covered with the Latex paint.  So an easy one to two coats of oil based on top was easier than doing the whole thing with oil based paint.  Although, I think the oil based paint covered better and would have taken fewer coats.  I could slap it on much thicker due to the longer drying period.  The oil based paint had hours to spread out more evenly than the latex. Anyone confused yet, anyone reading this??? so boring.  anyhow... Know this.   You can use oil based on top of latex, but not the other way around.  At least that's what my mom tells me.

Why was I not surprised that we missed some exposed parts of the cabinets.  More painting in my near future.  We decided to not paint the insides of the cabinets.  They were so nice compared to the old ones and I figured, less maintenance down the road. 

I now have fewer cabinets but more cabinet space.  These newish ones have twice the amount of shelves.  Big difference. 

As you can see, there is still work to do.