Kitchen Cabinet Redo

Do you hate the color, finish or style of your kitchen cabinets?  When we bought our current home about 9 years ago, I really loved how many kitchen cabinets my “new” kitchen had.  What I didn’t care for was the color.  They were sort of a pinkish cream color, and at almost 13 years old when we bought the house, they were a bit discolored, and picked up grime easily.

With my usual speed of doing home projects…  7 years later, I finally decided to try and stain them with a store bought kit for cabinets.  Since my cabinets were still in good shape, I didn’t want to replace them, so staining them seemed like a wise and cost effective option.

We have a local Home Depot store, and so I chose the option they had available, which was “Rust-oleum Cabinet Transformation Cabinet Coating System.”  They had a bunch of color options, and I was looking for a dark warm color, with a hint of red.

Here you can see how many choices they have, and they tint them at the store.  Amazon also has some of the colors, but they seem to be limited in choices.  At the time I purchased my kit, I didn’t see any test samples to test the color, which means, if you don’t end up liking the color, you have to purchase a whole new kit.  At around $60 to $70 a kit, that can get expensive, so choose wisely.  I chose the Rustic color.

Even though this is such a nice inexpensive option (compared to purchasing new cabinets), it is a lot of work, so I took my time.  What was nice was that the kit comes with a DVD and booklet to help explain the process.

My husband and I removed all the cabinet doors, and set up a huge workstation in our basement.  There are several steps involved in the process. There’s a deglossing, a bond coat, a decorative glaze and finally a protective top coat.   The directions also recommend numbering all the cabinets with a sketch of your kitchen layout, that way everything fits back the way it should!

It was a huge job, and took me several weeks, but I’ve read online that others have done it in a week.

My original plan was to buy new hardware for the cabinets.  Our hardware had been a dirty gold color, and I wanted a more updated bronze shade.  It turns out that it wasn’t easy finding hardware that would fit our cabinets, so we decided to use what we had, and paint them instead.  My husband had a genius idea to make the job easier.  He set up some boards on saw horses, and lightly screwed the hardware in to the boards, and it made it a cinch to paint it all.
He used a primer and spray paint made specifically for metal.

We also added door handles to minimize wear and tear on the “new” cabinet doors.  Here’s a picture to remind you of the before appearance of our kitchen.

It’s been 2 years since I did this project (yes, it’s taken me this long to write this post up, and take the after pictures), and so I can honestly tell you that they have held up beautifully!  I’m homeschooling 2 children, and I cook and bake a lot, so my kitchen gets a ton of use, and there is hardly a scratch anywhere on my cabinets, after 2 years of daily use.

I know these days, it seems that white and light grays are fashionable in home decor, but I really like my warm dark kitchen cabinets.

Here you can see the rich warm color and wood-like grain, and also the painted hinges.

The darker color makes the cleaning up-keep minimal.

For our next kitchen project, we’d like to do either a tile floor, or a different wood floor.  Though with our speed (or lack there of) in doing projects, it may be another two years…  😛

I was not compensated for this post.  I bought the supplies on my own.  If you’re interested in updating your cabinets, I would definitely recommend updating them with stain instead of replacing them, as long as they’re in good shape.

The new color goes with the decor of our home so much better than the old pink/creme colored cabinets, and we’ve received lots of compliments on them from guests to our home.  If you’ve thought about trying something like this, don’t be afraid to go for it!