Many of you know Charlie and I enjoy doing projects around the house, especially in the winter, and since we have basically given a makeover to every room in our house, I figured I would make a blog to maybe give ideas to others and put together all my pictures to show all the hard work we have done. :)
 We are always on a budget while doing these projects, Charlie does all the labor work himself, or by help of friends or family. Basically all we had to purchase was the material.




One project we conquered was the kitchen. When we first moved in it was horrible contruction grade cabinets with a small groovecut into them.  Appliances were old and white or cream colored, and worst of all no dishwasher!! I then attempted my first painting job to the cabinets.  I decided to paint them the off white color of the baseboards and trim. I do not recommend this by the way,but hey you've got to learn somehow! It then stayed this way for maybe 6 months.  At the time I was working at Lowes helping others get the kitchen of their dreams so I thought ALOT about what I really wanted to do to mine. (For super cheap of course!!) This is the idea I was going for when it came to the door. I really liked the rope trim.  This particular door was over $200 a linear ft. WOW!

inspiration

So after I got good deals on my appliances such as my $2500 Electolux fridge, I got for less than 1/2 the price. Love it by the way! Anyways... I got alot of ideas from the cabinet brands I sold at Lowe's with help from my parent's friend Greg, he makes awesome cabinets! After we took off the doors, sanded everything down, we just glued and nailed the rope trim we got at Lowe's.

being sanded, one on top is before.

After all the doors were completely sanded and new molding put over the existing groove, we then took them to the shop and sprayed them with a lacquer white paint.  Then took we applied to a tinted glaze to their after they dry.  The glaze was applied heavily, and whipped off with clean cloth. I prefer only the glaze in the detail or grain of the wood.  I am not sure what type of wood these cabinets were?? They were kind of knicked up but I think it just adds character  :)

Here is a small picture of some of the cabinets

We chose not to remove the actual cabinets from the walls, so therefore we just taped off the room went to sanding and painting.  We added a pretty molding to the top of the cabinets and a simple lightrail to the bottom of the cabinets. I chose a dark brown HD countertop by Formica from Lowe's, and a mosaic multi colored tile for the backsplash from Florum Tile Oulet.  For hardware I chose an oil rubbed bronze rope pull and oil rubbed bronze Delta faucet.  We were also told it would be too hard to make the doors with a hidden hinge, this was one of the main things I wanted, but I was so happy with the way they looked I didn't even mind!  My sink is a stainless 1 and a half, which I love because it is so deep!  Most of my materials were purchased from Lowes because I got a discount especially on special order items.  I also had alot of time to browse and decide on exactly what I wanted! haa haa :)  But when it comes to tile Florum is the place to go!

The kitchen wall color is a moss green, I really like i tand think it ties in well with the rest of the adjacent rooms. Our kitchen is a small U shaped kitchen and in the photo below the backsplash was still in progress. I will also post more pictures of before, it was quite scary!  But thanks to Charlie and my dad it looks like a brand new kitchen. Judging by my experience by pricing new cabinets and kitchen accessories, a new kitchen with the door I wanted from Lowe's would have ran the average person probably around $10,000 we did all this for about 1/5 that! :)



New lighting for over the table as well



Still waiting on backsplash in this photo