Week 5 & 6 - Cabinets completed!

The Cabinets

I didn't intend to go so long between posts but with the house, Classical Conversations (our homeschool program), my consignment sale, and a few other things going on, my time has been pretty limited.

I'm most excited about my cabinets, so I will finish telling you about those before I catch you up on the rest of the house. 

At the end of my last post, I had the primer on the boxes and doors and we had filled the nail holes with spackle.

When the weekend rolled around again, all the spackle was well dried. I simply folded a piece of sandpaper a few times and used the folded edge to sand the extra spackle in the grooves of my trim pieces. Then I sanded all of the primed doors and boxes with a palm-sander and 120 grit paper. After sanding all of them and painting one door with paint, I realized that my sanding job wasn't quite smooth enough. So I sanded ALL the doors again, with 80 grit. That was fun, I tell ya. Have I mentioned that I hate sanding? I was just happy Eric owns a palm-sander. 

Sanding finally complete, I broke out the paint. The guy at Sherwin Williams suggested going with ProClassic paint for the cabinets because it dried harder than their other paints and was more durable. At $50 per gallon, it wasn't cheap (and much to my chagrin, it went on 40% sale two weeks later!) but it was still less than going with the Rust-o-leum kit. I only needed one coat and used about half a gallon.

I used a brush to paint the fluted trim and get paint into the corners then rolled the rest of the face and lightly rolled outside the trim in order to give the doors a more uniform appearance. I'm pretty OCD about paint lines all going the same direction, etc. Fortunately, this weekend Ethan was visiting with Eric's parents and I didn't have to worry about him toddling all over my doors.

When we began our cabinet re-do, Eric and I knew we wanted to glaze the cabinets to give them more depth. I thought it would be fun to try as I had never glazed anything before. Again, the trusty sales guy at Sherwin Williams told me what to use for the glaze. It comes clear but can be tinted any color you choose. I asked them to tint it black.

Glaze day! I was so excited that I could barely wait to get started....until I tried my first cabinet door. I had saved a few of the doors (same style) from the junked vanities and primed and painted them along with my cabinets so that when it came time to glaze them, I would have somewhere to practice. I had prepped myself by watching tons of YouTube videos and perusing a multitude of blogs. Almost all the experts said you had a pretty big window of time to work with glaze and get it right. Maybe I accidentally bought quick-drying glaze (?) but their "forty-five minute window" was more like five minutes. First it was too heavy, then it was too light, then it looked like a toddler got into shoe polish, then I scrubbed it all off with a wet rag and started over. I repeated that three or four times before I went and got Eric. There may or may not have been a few tears shed. I kinda pride myself on being pretty DIY so it not working was a huge blow to my confidence. Once again, Eric came to my rescue. We figured out how damp the paint brush needed to be, etc. My biggest issue was getting all the glaze to run in the same direction. When we added the trim piece, it made it difficult to use long strokes. I could get the outside edges looking right and the middle of the center section but when it got close to the trim, it looked smudged. It nearly drove me nuts. I could NOT live with cabinets that looked like that. We finally figured out that we needed to use a wet brush (not dry) and damp rag to even things out. Eric went back to his plumbing project and here is what I did:

Using a foam brush, I started applying the glaze on the inside edges first (although it's probably not necessary, I usually develop a system when I paint so everything is applied in the same order - it may or may not make a difference but it's easier for me to remember what I'm doing).

Then I worked towards the center:

Then my outside edges until the entire face was covered:

Then, using a damp rag, I wipe the whole thing off very quickly being sure to rub my rag in the direction I want the glaze to follow:

Yes. My arm was going that fast.

Just keep wiping...

Getting closer:

 And closer:

After rubbing off some of the excess glaze, I used a wet paint brush to swish it back and forth so I could get my brush strokes to be even between the trim.

This was one of my first doors. It looked okay, but wasn't exactly what I had envisioned. 

After I glazed all the doors, I realized that some of them were darker than others and that I really preferred the darker look. I took the door I liked best, set it on my worktable and re-glazed all of the other doors until they matched. It was much easier to "darken" the glaze by this point because I had a lot more experience and I had a good idea of what I needed to do.

This is what I ended up with:



My drawer fronts:



Next, I had to glaze the cabinet boxes. That was a whole 'nother level of tricky. At least doors are fairly small and manageable. I did the boxes in about four foot sections because I couldn't reach much further without moving my ladder and once again, I had to work quickly. The bead-board proved problematic as the glaze either puddled or wouldn't go into the grooves. Gah. 

Don't ever ask me to glaze your cabinets. There is a reason why painters charge an arm and a leg.

Yeah. Don't paint your walls before your cabinets. I'm really glad I didn't.

The helpful guy at Sherwin Williams told me that a latex clear-coat (following the glaze) was optional although it would probably improve durability. With small children, I opted for the extra durability.

I chose a Minwax spray clear-coat over what Sherwin Williams offered (they only carry brush-on) because I was tired of brushing. Shh! Don't tell SW! 

I forgot that spray cans make blisters on your fingertips.

Our kitchen took about four cans.

When we took the doors off to clean them, I chunked all the old, greasy hinges. I found the same hinges in powder black on eBay and bought new ones for all the doors. Hint: eBay has AWESOME prices for door hardware. The hinges were a perfect fit and cost less than half of our local Lowe's identical product.

The kitchen is far from finished - as you can tell, we haven't painted yet! I'm really pleased with the way the cabinets turned out. They'll look a lot nicer when we decide on a paint color (we have several samples painted on the walls!), install the countertops and black appliances.

Enjoy!

What do you think? I'd love some feedback!