New Home Renovation Part 1 (Kitchen Cabinets)

  The dream of owning a home seemed like just that, a dream, but in June of 2019 our dream finally came true.  My husband and I have always been renters, moving from city to city living in a different apartment or home for 14 years, but finally in the spring of 2019 our dream become a reality.  It was our 13 year old child who motivated us to make the leap.  She was tired of moving to a new home every year and constantly starting over at a new school.  She had finally found a school she liked and an amazing group of friends.  So we knew we had to stay permanent and what better way then becoming homeowners.  
  Our search began with little hope of finding a home we could afford, but surprisingly after only about 1 month of searching we stumbled upon a new build home we could afford, and within a month we were signing papers and getting the keys to our new home.  We were excited to have a new home and a blank canvas to work with. 
  It wasn't long after settling in that we began making changes.  The first area of the home we decided to tackle was the kitchen.  The house came with a generic builder grade kitchen in a dark brown.  Yuck!  Who puts dark finishes in a home by the beach?  So we began by heading over to Home Depot and picking up samples for paint, flooring, tile, and countertops.  We knew what color scheme and style we wanted but were quickly hit with the reality that kitchens are crazy expensive.  So our search for inexpensive ways to upgrade a kitchen turned to the internet.    

Before: basic dark brown kitchen

  I began searching for countertop alternatives and ways to upgrade the cabinets without purchasing new ones.  After a few weeks of research and slight hesitation we decided the most affordable option was to paint the cabinets and install laminate countertops.   We found out that one of the best cabinet paints on the market is Benjamin Moore Advance Interior Paint.  We quickly headed over to our local store and talked to the experts.  They recommended spraying the cabinet doors and rolling the cabinet bases.  
  That night my husband and I watched several YouTube videos on spraying cabinets.  The next day we picked up a paint sprayer, the paint, primer, roller, brushes, and painters tape.  The paint sprayer we found on Facebook Marketplace and I believe it was an inexpensive Wagner, but I definitely recommend purchasing a more expensive better quality sprayer.  Ours worked great for the entire project but finally stopped working when my husband was on the last cabinet door of our Island.
  Now that we had our supplies it was time to get started.  My husband created a painting space in the garage using plastic tarps to create walls and set up his saw horses with 1x4s running across the top to act as a table.  He first sprayed the doors with a tinted blue primer while I primed the cabinet bases.   We let everything dry thoroughly for 24 hours then went back and sanded everything smooth.  Sanding was by far the worst part and I highly recommend that if your cabinets are newer skip the priming step all together, it really is not necessary.

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  Once those first steps were completed the actual painting began.  My husband worked out a system that made the paint spraying go quite smoothly.  He laid out two doors at a time on the sawhorses and sprayed a coat of paint.  Brought them in the house, propped them up on solo cups on the floor to dry, and repeated the process with the remainder doors.  He sprayed the interior of the cabinet doors first.  After, about 12 hours of drying he applied the second coat, then moved on to the front side once the interior was completely dry.  ​

  All in all it took about 3 days for the doors to be completely done.   While he painted the doors I painted the cabinet bases and I soon realized after the first coat that I was not good at painting, so I ended up passing that job over to my husband as well.  Once everything was cured, about 36 hours we installed the new brushed nickel cabinet pulls and we couldn't be more pleased with how the cabinets turned out.  Next up we change out the countertops and the sink.
​ ---------------------------------------Kitchen Renovation Part 2 (Countertops)------------------------------------------

After: beautiful blue cabinets brighten the space