Oh yeah, I have a new kitchen…

Well! It was just about forever ago — or so it seems because as my last ominous post so obviously pointed out, I’ve been busy and tired and woe-to-me — that we redid the kitchen!

It has been done for about a month now, save for the huge, ugly monstrosity of a lighting fixture (we’ll get there someday) and the pantry with the missing door (that we’d like done in some sort of fogged glass, so we’ll be outsourcing that job) but I have cleverly cropped both those out of this picture so that all you can see is PRETTY KITCHEN.

There’s just no truth in advertising, is there?

Since this was 100% DIY, I thought I’d let you know a few of the things we used — techniques, products, and otherwise.

First, we were going to follow a tutorial we found online, but when Chris went to Lowe’s to pick up the paint and stuff, the Lowe’s Paint Guy highly recommended this product, which includes de-glosser, paint, and topcoat. No sanding necessary! This greatly appealed to the anti-mess part of me. Which is all of me.

They sell it in a one-pack for about $80 or a two-pack for $150 and based on the amount of linear feet (do I sound like I know what I’m talking about?) in our kitchen, we decided to go with the one-pack. That turned out to not be enough (AT ALL. We used three coats, rather than the recommend two, on some larger areas, and we spilled some paint), but at the end of the day (it is what it is) and we only spent $10 more than necessary by buying the second kit.

(Note: This whole setup comes with a 100% money-back guarantee, so if we hated it, we could get all our money back and we’d only be out the four weekends of blood, sweat, tears, and sanity it took to complete this job. I kid! Chris and I are surprisingly good at working on house things together and not because I make him do all the work, contrary to popular opinion.)

Anyway, the method for this kit is the following: Clean the cabinets, scrub with de-glosser, let sit for an hour, paint the fronts, paint the backs, paint the fronts again, paint the backs again, wait awhile, apply topcoat to the fronts, wait some more, apply topcoat to the back, then wait a really long time (like overnight) before adding hardware and putting back on the frames. DONE.

Now, speaking of hardware…

We went with the cheapest set Lowe’s sold in multi-packs because if there’s one thing I don’t care about (but could be end up caring about too much, if given the opportunity), it’s hardware. So we went with the basic, brushed-nickel finish, end of story.

To put the hardware on straight, Chris bough one of these cheap plastic templates that are used for drilling hardware or hinges or something. We had to drill a couple new holes into the template based on the size of our hardware, but it worked out well. Just measure twice or three times, drill once, you know.

And speaking of hinges…

On the recommendation of Chris’s mom, we spray-painted the hinges, as opposed to replacing them. I’ve heard bad stories of cabinets not sitting or closing properly after changing out the hinges and so to mitigate that (and to save ourselves time, money, and energy) we just spray-painted them. GENIUS IDEA.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the way the kitchen looks. There are a few more updates I’d like to do — maybe an orange or yellow drop-down pendant light for over the sink; a new, lower-to-the-ground table for us eat; and of course the aforementioned lighting fixture and pantry — but it turned out the way I wanted and it makes everything very bright and most importantly, now in my 2012 Year in Review post, I can finally say I got a new kitchen.

A note about the paint and topcoat: The topcoat leaves behind a slightly yellowish tinge, so since we used bright white paint, everything has a slightly yellow tinge to it, especially in places where the wood grain is rough. I don’t mind this, actually; since the whole thing was DIY (read: not perfect) and since our cabinets aren’t smooth to begin with, it works. But, it would have been nice to know in the first place, as then we may have picked a different shade of white as opposed to THE WHITEST WHITE EVER.

And that’s the kitchen! It only took us approximately 80 man hours and a case of champagne to complete! If you have any questions about what we did or used, let me know. Also, a major shout-out goes to LG for not becoming mobile until after we’d finished the bottom cabinets. You’re just a gem, lady.

Even if you strategically remove all the tomatoes from your food and throw them on the floor

(Kitchen before, in case you forgot.)