Kitchen Makeover #1

Transform My Home

I am going to be focusing on a kitchen project which I tackled at my house early on, about 1998 or so. The biggest challenge was having the funds to do it right, unfortunately I had to cut a few corners to save money. Down the road in 2007 I was able to fix the corners that were cut which I will detail in the next post. I will call this kitchen makeover part 1.

The kitchen was remodeled in 1968 by my parents so we are dealing with thirty year old materials. I would say the trend was dark wood and gold appliances at the time. You can see the dark wood cabinets, the gold oven, although the fridge had been replaced at some point. In the photo I had already ripped down the dark wood tiles that were glued to the plaster ceiling and put up new sheetrock.

Along with dark wood tiles on the ceiling there was also the same dark wood on the walls in the form of panelling, again the trend of the times. This was all ripped out and the plaster walls covered with sheetrock. While all the walls were open this was the perfect time to run new electrical wires for the space. During the demo I uncovered the chimney which had an opening capped that once housed a small wood burning stove in the kitchen.

You can see here a few of the shortcuts I had to take. The first one was the cabinets, although I would have preferred to replace them there was really nothing wrong with them and they were of a good quality. The old ones were dark wood and had smooth solid doors. I took my router and carved a bead in all the doors to add a bit of detail and then painted them white. The bead detail was easy, the painting not so much. First you need to thoroughly clean every surface then lightly sand and wipe clean. You must use an OIL BASE PRIMER to cover the dark wood and two coats of your finish color. I used a hi-gloss white for ease of cleaning. I must say they came out looking pretty good. The other corner you can see is I painted the oven door white with an enamel appliance paint. It was a lot cheaper than a new oven which worked fine at the time. You can also see the porcelain tile going down in this picture as well. For the backsplash I used a beadboard sealed with a penetrating sealer, corner cut number three.
Along with the dark wood ceiling, cabinets and walls, all the doors were hollow and you guessed it dark wood. I replaced these with solid wood six panel pine doors and new hardware.

The finished project photos are below. Once again this was the first makeover at a time when my wife and I didn't have much of an idea as to what our taste would be. Since this time we have gone country, really country, primitive country you would say. The changes you will see in the next post reflect that taste. The book listed at the top of the post is one that I have and recommend. It gives the basic information you need to get started with a kitchen makeover project.