Kitchen Cupboards

My kitchens are always a work in progress. I don't think they are ever finished, so I am sure that there will be many more posts pertaining to my kitchens. But lets me honest, the kitchen cabinets are what makes the look of the kitchen.  Floors and countertops add to the look and functionality, however, you can get fake floors and countertops that look just as good as the real stuff, and so people can walk into your kitchen and be wowed by your kitchen without top of the line floors or countertops, but your cabinets need to look good.

Back in our condo we had the standard run of the mill yellowing oak cabinets. We lived in a complex of 32 buildings with 12 condos each. All of them had the same living room / kitchen main room.

 

(side note: I really liked our condo, but if it lacked anything it was storage space, you can see that all of my food storage was on my counters. To make it look a little better I used spray paint and painted all the #10 cans with red spray paint and used a silver sharpie to label each one.  I really liked the look, and it didn't bother me too badly that all my food storage was out on my counter top)

Because the kitchen was the same kitchen as all 384 of my neighbors, I really wanted to do something different with my kitchen.  I decided to go dark! Can I say I LOVED the dark! I sanded them all down: I removed the doors, used my sander to sand the flat spots and hand sanded all the curves, edges and bevels. You have to make sure you get off all of the previous finish or the wood will not absorb the stain, so sand until you think you got it all, and then sand some more.  Then I got a dark stain and stained them dark. I honestly don't remember what color of stain it was, something dark. I then sealed them off in three coats of polyurethane.  They looked amazing! Held up great, were easy to wash, and under the sink that normally gets water damaged didn't.

 

 

My cupboards were about the only thing in my condo that I was sad to leave, oh and my toffee colored walls with chocolate trim.  But boy was I excited to go find my dream home. (more on my dream home later this post is about my kitchen cupboards).

 

 

We bought our new home, it was built in the 50's but the kitchen had been updated in the 80's. . . back to the yellowing oak.

Sorry they are kind of blurry.

 The yellowing oak, once again, had to go. There was lots else that needed to change about my kitchen but first the cupboards. I really thought about going dark again.  But I felt like my kitchen was already too dark, and I wanted to lighten it up.  So I bought some bonding primer:

 

This stuff required only cleaning of the cabinets, no sanding! that was a huge plus.  It was stinky oil based stuff so I took all the cabinets out and painted them outside.  One of the best decisions I have ever made was that all the white in my house would be exactly the same white.  In my condo I made the mistake of not making note of what white was used where and I discovered how difficult it is to do touch ups when there is different paint used in different areas.  So anywhere you see white in my house it is the same semi-gloss paint, and same exact color. So it wasn't difficult deciding what to paint my kitchen cupboards. 

Now I looked for pictures when I first "finished" the cupboards, however I couldn't find any, so I had to take these today. This is part of the evolving kitchen scenario.  Originally the cupboards were painted and put back exactly how they were.  But a few months later when my three year old son had pulled the second microwave off the counter I decided I was done with the counter top microwave and insisted that we get an over the range Microwave.  In order to do this we had to remove the soffits above the cupboards, a post will follow about that later. 

 

These are not quite complete, someday I hope to add some molding around the tops.

 

Now for my favorite part of my cupboards - my organization decals.

 I work full time, and my husband stays at home and is working on his Master's degree at ASU on line.  And is at home with the kids (he is honestly the busiest guy I know, and I really think I got the easy part of this arrangement).  But because I work away from home,  he is often the one that cooks, and is almost always the one that puts away the dishes.  But he was never consistent about where he put things, and very rarely would things get put where, in my mind, they should go, and so when I do cook every so often I could never find anything.  In the scriptures we learn that we must " Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;" Often during dinner preparation my home would become anything but a house of God as I would get stressed out looking for the kitchen utensil I needed as my dinner started to burn. I decided I needed to do as we are told in the scriptures and Organize myself, and prepare every needful thing. My sister made me these amazing decals with her Silhouette.

Now everyone knows where everything goes, and where to find things.

 

She made them with just standard vinyl, I think next time I would have her make them out of exterior vinyl, I think it would hold up better.

 

If I were to do it again I think I would stain the cabinets,  the paint doesn't hold up as well and I have to continuously wash it, and it doesn't clean as easily or as well as the stained cabinets.  But I think they both look loads better then the yellowing oak.

 

I truly feel like the kitchen is the heart of the home, you want it a happy place because everyone gathers there, that is where memories are made, families gather, and tummies are filled.