The Kitchen Cabinets
2 years ago, I decided to repaint the kitchen cupboards while I was painting the kitchen walls. But, after 3 long days of fighting with the dirtiest, greasiest walls and ceiling I have ever encountered - TSP barely made a dent in the filth so it took 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of paint to make them look reasonable again - I started priming the cupboards. Unfortunately, I realized too late that the doors really needed to be sanded down thoroughly before I painted to get rid of the thick coating of grease and filth as well as the old varnish. That sounded like way more work than I was willing to do so I gave up, hoping we'd win the lottery or something and I could just get a new kitchen. Alas, there has been no lottery win but I finally got a large enough bee in my bonnet to get started with the sanding. It may have had to do with how extra-crappy the primed cabinets looked next to my nice, new floor.

The before photos... (as always I got started removing stuff before I remembered about taking photos. We did actually have doors on those open cabinets you see)

My lovely assistant and I got to work sanding all the various surfaces of the cabinets and scraping about 30 years worth of deep-fry grease out of the corners. Ewww! I swear the people who lived in our house at one point must have deep-fried everything. Yick! The primer, which had easily scraped off the varnished surfaces while installed, decided it was going to adhere carefully at this point so the sanding was a little trickier than I'd hoped. Isn't it always? Morgan didn't want to get left out of the proceedings so she kept coming outside when it was quiet to lie in mounds of sawdust, then running back inside anytime the power tools started up again.

My original plan had been to frame each cupboard door in casing and apply a wainscotting panel to the center of each door but once I started cutting the casings for the doors I realized what a huge amount of work it was going to be to get exact cuts for 12 different doors as well as the ideal piece of paneling. A piece of casing along the bottom of the door was the eventual winner for how we could spruce them up a bit without doing anything ridiculous. We glued then clamped the casings on to all the doors and drawers - plus, I got to say the words "CLAMPS!" a lot, which is always fun. My mum didn't understand the Futurama reference but she doesn't understand a lot of things that come out of my mouth. That's probably the way nature intended it. At the end of each day we had to bring all the doors in so they wouldn't get wet with dew overnight. Our living room floor became a cupboard door obstacle course.

Before we could install the doors we needed to sand, prime and paint the bases of the cupboards in the kitchen too. Sephie decided she needed to help Mum paint though I think she avoided getting any paint on her tail, for a change.

Eventaully I was able to put new handles on all the doors and drawers but the new hinges I bought didn't fit - and these were the second lot of non-fitting hinges. Improvising, I decided the old hinges would probably do well with some spray paint, we scrubbed the now-familiar grease and filth layers off them with TSP and gave them a good spraying with the paint leftover from constructing Theovis' Halloween costume.

Theovis helped me get the doors back on once everything was finished and we now have a much snazzier looking kitchen. It only took 3 days and 2 evenings of solid labour. And now that they're finally finished and I don't have that unfinished task hanging over my head, I can look at them with a fresh, serene attitude and think, "Maybe I should have painted them blue..."

Before/After                                                  Before/After