Glitter and Grass: Life After Kitchen Cupboards

There are still three cupboard doors waiting to be hung and a few spots for touch-ups...but as far as I'm concerned, the kitchen cupboard project I was putting off for three and a half years is as good as finished.

Which means it's requires immediate and annoyingly detailed blogging.

You might ask why I put this project off for so long. I'll gladly share...1. I knew it would be an absolute mess. 2. I wanted to work on this project during the 'sweet spot' where Josh isn't working in the late fall/early spring. 3. That sweet spot didn't happen this year, and it got cold too early and stayed cold too long. 4. We kept going back and forth about buying another house/moving/etc. 5. Remember that one time when we overhauled a farmhouse? Ya me too. Kind of kills the motivation for those 'extra' 'fun' projects.

Without further adieu...the Great Kitchen Cupboard Monstrosity of 2014.

RESEARCH: My research was made up of 10% unhelpful blogs and 90% helpful tips from my 'Wood Guy.' Yes, I have a Wood Guy. His name is Nathan and he is a realtor at my office and you can't have him. He's MY Wood Guy. Anyway, Nate came over a few weeks before the kitchen mayhem ensued to check out the cupboard doors and offer advice and suggestions.

At first glance, our old cupboards looked 'nice'...they were in good shape...didn't show any signs of wear and tear...they were just painfully outdated. People who really love wood (like grandparents and my dad) couldn't believe I wanted to CHANGE these beautiful cupboards. Turns out, when we took a closer look (at the doors specifically) they were just made out of plywood and covered with a thin layer of maple wood. Glued together, and then finished with a 'Rot Stone' technique.

My kitchen circa 2010 is so offensive. Let's move on.

Nate explained the Rot Stone finish is a really labor-intensive, interesting finish using smooth stones to sand the wood and make it super smooth, then stain, then stone, repeatedly until the final finish was achieved. It sounds like it was a really expensive way to make our really cheap cupboards LOOK really expensive. Lovely.

PLAN/PREP: Saturday, March 29th was the first weekend in 6 months where we had NOTHING planned. Perfect day to kill ourselves with a project, right? I estimated this project would take around two weeks since I wasn't taking any time off to work on the cupboards (turns out that was a good choice since the time it takes for each coat to dry meant a lot of down time). I read blogs about how this project could be accomplished in a weekend. And how it's so easy a toddler could help do it. Those blogs are blasphemy.

I went to Lowe's and bought two small cans of Dark Walnut Rust-O-Leum stain and one small can of satin Rust-O-Leum polyurethane (Nate recommended flat or satin poly because anything with gloss would have brought out imperfections that might be in the cupboard doors). I bought small foam brushes to use for this entire project...they cut down on brush marks significantly.

First I had to unload ALL of our cupboards and drawers. This included pitching some kitchen junk we never use or haven't touched in years and was just taking up space. While I was doing this, Josh was taking all the doors down and removing the hinges. This might have been the most overwhelming part. Everything had to go. Curtains, rugs, pictures, and anything and everything that was on the countertop. So all that stuff got piled here:

We used fine sandpaper to sand the doors and drawers outside. I taped up some plastic and with help from my mother-in-law, we went to town sanding the 'bones' of the cupboards. This would be the messiest, most uncomfortable part of the process. I've never had such a longing in my heart to vacuum.

The next day my sister-in-law came over and we knocked out the rest of the sanding of the cupboard doors plus some staining. When we're together it's like there are two of me and the productivity goes through the roof. I love it.

Here's the worst of it. Rags, tools, stain, dust, and junk everywhere. Paper plates and plastic silverware were our saving grace during this project.

STAINING: I think a lot of people are confused about the final product. The cupboards look like they were painted rather than stained. Because of the way my cupboards were finished in 1956, the stain wasn't going to 'soak in' to the wood...remember that part about not being able to sand down to the bare wood because it would be some gorgeous plywood? Yeaaaa. I was freaking out the stain wasn't soaking in like the directions on the back of the can instructed.

So 48 hours in I panicked and sent an all caps, bold email to Nate (he's a Realtor and they only respond to emails about 7% of the time) and re-asked all my questions. I was instructed to just paint the stain on the wood and let it dry. The stain is oil-base, so EVERYTHING took a lot longer to dry than if I had been doing the stain and wipe technique.

Let me break this down for you. I needed to get two coats, plus a final 'touch-up' coat on the bones, the doors, and the drawers. And after all of that, still needed to do two coats of polyurethane. Each coat took a good 24 hours to dry before I could do the next coat...and since doors have two sides and I couldn't flip them for 24 hours...getting them totally done, took a solid five to six days. If we had more room outside or a 'shop' there are better techniques for painting and staining, but I basically set up my shop in the middle of the kitchen with plastic and some rags laid on the floor. I used a stool to lay each door while I painted on the stain. When I finished, I lifted it up, and laid it somewhere in dining room, living room, or hallway to dry. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

After everything was stained and the cupboard bones had all their stain and poly, I was able to put our house back together a little bit.

This felt reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally good.

FINISHING: We added fresh brushed silver hinges and knobs (those were my Christmas gift two years ago in an attempt to motivate me to do this project :) Josh hung eight doors before getting frustrated and calling it a night last Thursday. Jamie's boyfriend Keaton came over the next night and hung eight more. On Saturday morning I hosted a bridal shower for a friend and Josh got up and hung four more doors so the kitchen wouldn't look quite so unfinished when guests arrived.

I forgot to do a "Man Candy Monday' on Instagram yesterday, but this should have been it. This is 9:00 on a Saturday morning. Bless.

So here's our new and improved kitchen after $30 of stain and poly, lots of coffee, lots of help from in-laws, and a frustrated husband who didn't think the cabinets looked that bad in the first place: