My Latest Project Around the House

After a decade of tolerating my kitchen, I've decided to do something about it. More accurately, my wife and I have decided to change things. The previous owner painted the cabinets white, and the walls are a disgusting beige. Anyone who has kids and/or dogs knows that white is not the ideal color for a kitchen. Here's a "before" shot.


I decided that I'd start the project by stripping the paint from the cabinets and drawers, just to see what's under the paint. On the floor, you may notice my heat gun and putty knife. When I took this "before" shot, I'd already started removing the paint in another area of the kitchen. You may also notice the beer can sitting on the stove. Very few projects around my house are accomplished without the consumption of this most lovely of malt beverages.

After stripping the first set of drawers and the surrounding frame, I've decided that it's definitely worth my time to strip the paint off of all of the cabinets. It took me approximately five hours to remove the paint from this area. So it's very time-consuming, but in the end I think it will be more than worth the effort -- especially considering how much more it would cost to reface the cabinets. Here's a shot of what the bare wood after stripping and sanding.

You may notice that the cabinet frame doesn't really show the wood's natural grain nearly as well as the drawers themselves. I plan to address this by staining everything to help bring out the natural grain in the finish.

In the past, most of the renovation projects around the house have been mine. I'd choose what to do, when to do it, and how it would be done. Mrs. Evan always seems to trust my vision and invariably conveys satisfaction with the end result; but I really wanted her to give more input on this project. After some discussion, I think we're going to base the project around the color yellow -- similar to the coffee mug shown on the counter above the recently-sanded drawers. We may also add a shade of orange for an accent color... we're still working that out.

Either way, we're leaning toward using a water-based stain for the wood, and tinting the stain with a color similar to the yellow we're using for our primary color in the paint scheme. Additionally, I've discovered that the center portions of the cabinets can be removed, and we will probably replace them with a frosted glass. The glass should make the kitchen look a bit larger, and since it's frosted, we won't have to keep them completely organized.

Overall, I suspect this project will take around two months -- one month to strip the paint from the cabinets, and one month for painting, staining, trim work and any accents we choose to add. Fortunately, all of this work can be done in bits and pieces, and we don't have to worry about being without our kitchen for any amount of time.

I'm also pleased to see that my younger daughter is interested in what I'm doing, and has already spent nearly an hour helping me with removing the paint and sanding.