Oh my lanta.
In a hundred years, you’ll never guess what my husband is going to let me do with the house.
So I will tell you.
He has agreed to PAINT OUR KITCHEN CABINETS WHITE.
This has been an ongoing discussion/wishing/arguing ordeal for a couple of years around here. He, like many men, has a pathological aversion to painting a piece of wood. The cabinets in our kitchen are a nice oak, but they are over 20 years old and starting to look quite dated. It’s a small kitchen and the countertops are going to need replacing, and the floors (vinyl) are shot to hell and need to be replaced. Painting the cabinets would update them immensely, along with replacing the hardware.
Why the sudden turnaround? I’m not sure – he recently completed a painting project for some customers who had him paint six or seven doors in their house: he had to sand down the finish and painted them with his airless sprayer. Oak doors are now a creamy white – and he kind of liked the look of them afterward. Okay, well, he didn’t MIND the look of them.
Also, looking around our house, he finally noticed – after 11 years here – that the baseboard trim in the kitchen and dining room doesn’t match the trim around the doors and windows. His entire “keep the integrity of the original era of the house” argument was shot. Besides, the cabinets are not original – they’re nice enough, but they aren’t mid-century retro or anything. They’re solid oak with a raised panel on each door, with super-80s cream-colored porcelain knobs.
This is a pretty old picture of the kitchen, but the only one I could find that wasn’t super cluttered. You can see that the layout is fairly narrow (a “two-butt” kitchen at the most) and you can also see the wood edging on the countertops, which isn’t my favorite thing. PC hates the yellow paint, and I’m a bit tired of it myself.
A few inspiration pictures I found on Pinterest:
The first one…Oh dear God, I love this one so much it makes me weepy, with the robin’s egg blue and the retro red curtains. I need to sit down.
These are nice, also.
from Remodelaholic
And this one:
Via Sidewalk Shoes
I think you can see where I’m going with this. What are your thoughts? Do you think we’re crazy?
We painted our oak cabinets white, it was a VAST improvement. It was so much airier and cleaner immediately. I’ve never regretted it.
http://princessnebraska.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/this-is-what-7000-trips-to-home-depot-looks-like/
I remember your pictures—it turned out so nice! The drawer pulls are exactly what I have in mind for our kitchen.
do it, do it! i sent photos and will send more tomorrow that show the IKEA hardware that i used. i FINALLY have a dishwasher after 35 years (bought the microwave, stove and DW on craigslist, plus the deep porcelain sink from another person). i used an alkyd and a good primer (my husband sprayed them), and a sherwin-williams match to ben moore’s “white dove” because it matched the white of the floor i could not afford to replace (deep cleaned it). he used a tiny celled sponge roller for the cabinet faces. i sent for samples from wilson art, formica, abet lamininati, hinges from here: http://www.cabinet-hinges.net/hinges/full-wrap-full-wrap-hinge-_WLD-P5710F-W2.php
lucked out with my laminate guy, who did my L-shape plus a formica top for the ikea unit i purchased and placed where my table once was…i think i came in way under $2000. laminate/labor $1000, paint, hinges, pulls, ikea unit, faucet and dishwasher repair (had been sitting in the garage for 5 years). i made tape pulls (see the 2 photos i just e-mailed to you) so i could pull out the drawers once the fronts were off. i did talk him into reversing the door fronts so they look like the shaker style. i chose the simplest of treatments for the formica top, even though the guy tried to talk me into a decorative edge. i like clean and simple, and i like my kitchen again. still need to put casters on the ikea unit so i can use it as an island, if necessary, and a step-can for trash. it looks HUGE now.
plus, he painted the white ikea unit the same white as the cabinets, so it looks like it was meant to be…
We painted our cupboards white in our previous home…the success is in the prep! (We painted the insides too)
I like the white! I wish I could convince my husband to paint ours. They are oak like yours but the people who built the house stained the cabinets a medium/darkish (built in 1978) and the previous owners left them as is. We redid the kitchen 10 years ago and rather than let me paint (oh good god NO! Not paint on wood!) he had them sanded down to their original light color & sealed. But 10 years later they are getting darker again. I’d like to do the cabinets in a light cream or eggshell and the walls in a pale pale green or blue but even if I persuade him to paint the cabinets I’ll be another 2 years arguing with him over color.
Plus now we have an island that matches the cabinets but with dark trim and it will be a PITA to paint, plus it gets dinged all the time. So I suspect the best I’ll get is the cabinets sanded back down to the light color.
I think it’s a splendid idea. A friend of ours has ” pickled” oak, which has beautiful texture and interest. I love a white kitchen and that is what mine is, but with ‘out-of-th-box’ white laminated cabinets that are disintegrating fast. I, too, am dreaming of updating.
And we also have a ‘two butt’ kitchen. When our daughter visits (she’s bigger than I am and loves to cook, expansively) chaos ensues.