The Kitchen | Part I: Cabinets

Before

Hello hello hello

Before I get into this, I want to set the scene. Cue flashback music and a wavy effect over the screen...

2013. Int., bedroom in a student house - day
A twenty year old Frances lies in bed, scrolling through home renovation blogs on her phone. One day, she tells herself (in an usually high-pitched, dreamy voice), I'll have a blog I can write about painting things on that people will read.

CUT TO:
Present day. Int., very messy spare room in a rented flat - evening
Twenty-four year old Frances sits at the computer with paint-caked nails and a look of weary exhaustion in her eye that's 60% low blood pressure and possible anaemia, 40% having spent every spare moment in the last fortnight, save the last two days (see above RE: I am a crumbling husk of a human), sanding, steaming, scraping and painting. And we haven't even touched the majority of the house yet.

Adulting: it's fun!

ANYWAY. Kitchen cabinets! Let's have at 'em. The top picture is what we were faced with when we first walked in to the room: blah, beige, and bland. Nothing really wrong with them, but equally... not the most aesthetically inspiring. In terms of design they're pleasingly simple and classic. They just needed a bit of an update. Which is my cue to show you the after, I believe:

After

Did I take the after picture from the same angle? No, no I did not. Did I only just realise this and can't be bothered to wait another day to get a picture from the same angle? Yes. But I digress.

Ta-da! It's a pretty huge improvement, in my humble opinion. Obviously, the walls, floor and tiles have had a bit of a makeover too - but that's for another post (I know, the suspense must be killing you). Oh, and the lighting. THE LIGHTING. For some reason, previous owners of the house (who, as we are quickly discovering, made some very questionable choices in general) chose really dim, yellowy lighting for every bulb, so without sunlight it feels like you're seeing everything through olive oil. The first major improvement we made to the kitchen was swapping out the lighting to some nice little energy-efficient LEDs, which made an enoromous difference. The room was instantly ten times lighter, and you can actually imagine yourself properly cooking in there now instead of squinting to see in the gloom.

Here's the kitchen pre-painting but post-lighting change so you can see the difference:

After we put proper bulbs in

Back to the cupboards.

The first thing we did was remove all of the doors that could be removed so that they could be painted, at which point we discovered that the piece of MDF that ran along the base of the top cupboards was actually two bits of MDF attached (poorly) to the main carcasses by three nails:

Why?

Why, again? Feat. gaffa taped electricals

Not really seeing the point in keeping this weird and flimsy trimming, we tore it off. It was super satisfying.

Goodbye, pointless MDF!

We debated removing the top trim as well, but decided that while the base trim detracted from the overall look by being generally a bit shit, the top piece kind of makes it look more like a 'proper' fitted kitchen, rather than the ragtag bunch of misfit cupboards it's clearly made of. I think? Anyway. Next, I primed. I primed like my life depended on it:

Priming

I used Crown Cupboard Makeover Primer, which only needed one coat, and my Mum and I discovered it went on best with a brush. Pro tips!

We left it to dry overnight, and went at it the next day with our chosen colour - Rust-Oleum Furniture Paint in Duck Egg. Quick pause: if you're painting your cupboards, I love the way this paint turned out but we had a few issues (I like to think of them as 'teething problems') with it, and I'm a little wary of how the paint will wear in the future, although we've done as much as we can to seal it and fingers crossed it'll hold out for a few years until we redecorate again. As I mentioned in this post I fell for the idea of having a blue kitchen a while ago and Alex did too, but there wasn't any designated 'cupboard paint' in shades we liked available, so we had to improvise a little bit. 

Those teething problems I mentioned? Here's one of them:

After the first coat

The first coat of paint went on mega patchy. The tin suggested the use a roller, which I was hoping to do for a polished finish rather than the more shabby-chic look of brushstrokes, but for whatver reason the paint was not having it. The door on the far left with the patch of white is a testament to this. The Rust-Oleum stuff is quite thick/tacky, so it starts to stick to the material as soon as it goes on, which means that if you try to go over any bits of it it comes off in chunks. Also, for some reason it dripped like a bad tap when you painted the door lying down, but went on much easier with the door leaning against a wall. Why? I don't know. At the end of the second day we were left with a bunch of drippy, patchy cupboard doors and a feeling of major trepidation. 

The inside of this cupboard was the worst after the first coat

BUT! The next day (this was all done over the recent Bank Holiday weekend) we returned and I settled in to do the second coat. I sanded down the worst of the drips and patches and started to do the second coat with a paintbrush again. It looked better, but I wasn't getting the effect I wanted and I was starting to regret the whole endeavor. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I decided to do the second coat on one of the doors with a roller, just to see what would happen.

And it. was. fabulous.

After the second coat. Left: paint brush, right: roller

Exactly the finish and coverage I wanted! For whatever reason, the failures of the roller on the first coat completely disapparated. I was super excited, not only because it meant that everything wasn't a total loss, but also because painting the cupboards with a roller instead of a brush was waaay quicker and I'm a very lazy person. 

Even the cupboard looked better!

BEAUTIES

This was the point at which we started reattaching the handles. Because this kitchen is one million percent Pinterest-inspired, it had to have a few things, as I detailed in my kitchen inspo post. One was blue cabinets, of course, and another was two-tone cabinets, which we ended up doing in a different way to what I had in my mind by painting the inside of the cupboard with glass doors a darker colour (also Rust-Oleum Furniture Paint, in Belgrave). But the most Pinteresty, most important thing? It needed gold accents. And they needed to be spray painted.

Gollllllllllllld handles

I love the combo of the gold and the blue, it really gives the sense of chicness which the sad creamy cabinets and silver hardware were lacking before. Also, it makes me think of Ladurée macarons, and who doesn't like to think about macarons?

Mmmm, macarons

Finally, we finished off the paint with Annie Sloan Clear Chalk Paint Wax, which I had left over from a previous DIY because apparently that's the sort of person I have become. When we were reattaching the cupboards we got a few finger and thumb prints on the paint, so we decided that waxing would be a good idea to give added protection - the Annie Sloan wax is waterproof so we'll be able to wipe them down if needed.

And that's all, folks! How we gave our kitchen cabinets a makeover with a lot of effort but not too much money. Stay tuned for how we gave the rest of the room a much-needed facelift! I can't wait until we properly move in and I get to put our things in here...