DIY White Washed Cabinets

I've gotten several emails asking how our DIY kitchen refinishing project is going. The cabinets are done!! I was beginning to think I would die of stripping fume inhalation and we'd never finish. Or I'd  be permanently pocked by chemical burns, but the burns have all healed. So here are the cabinets.

This is what they looked like before. Fifties blonde with peeling shellac. Pieces of wood missing. Really ugly. So bad we wondered if they were salvageable. But we decided to give it a shot.

 Here we are in the middle of the process. I'm stripping the inside of the cupboards, and my husband Calvin is stripping the drawers. The house is seventy years old, and I had to rip out six different types of adhesive shelf paper--one from every decade.

Finished product. (Yes, the light coming in the windows actually looks that way. It glows off the cabinets in a cool blue tone. In the late afternoon, the kitchen is bathed in a pink glow.) The garden window was our first foray into kitchen refurbishing. You couldn't even see through the window that was there before.

Another view. Notice the walls--yeah, they're in really bad shape too. I think I've talked Cal into painting them on his vacation. So, there will be another installment of photos from the DIY kitchen.

I don't know if you noticed the plant hanging over the window. It's a tropical pitcher plant, a carnivorous plant. The pitchers are full of watery goo that attracts and digests bugs. I take it outside every couple of days to it can capture dinner. (This plant was my anniversary present. Some women want jewels--I want weird plants. And my husband indulges me.)

Next summer, we hope to fix the floor. Under several layers of linoleum is the original wood floor made of a double layer of 1 x 6 planks! I can't wait to refinish it.

Top Ten Things I Learned While Refinishing Our Kitchen Cabinets

  1.      When you get a burning sensation on your skin, wash it really quickly. If you ignore the pain, you will get a chemical burn. And they can blister. (BTW, pain is a gift from God for the foolish who strip cabinets in shorts and a tank top.)

2. If you live in an old house, you can assume that nothing in your house is standard. It means that hardware is very expensive. I found drawer pulls that would fit our drawers and cabinets. But they cost $400 a piece. Apparently, they were “vintage.” (Vintage is code for it-costs-way-more-money-than-it’s-worth.) We drilled new holes and used wood putty.

3.      “Eyeballing” where you should drill the holes for the new handles doesn’t work. If you don’t want angled handles, use a ruler.

4.      White wood-stain dyes fingernails. I’ve been very hip for weeks now. Not intentionally hip however.

5.      The “helpers” at Home Depot know absolutely nothing about the products that they sell.

6.      Don’t assume that the cabinets are dry. High humidity keeps things wet for a long time.

7.      Remind your kids not to dump laundry on the cabinet doors that are “drying” on top of the washing machine and dryer.

8.      Climbing inside a cupboard while staining the inside leads to volatile chemical brain-fry.

9.      When you talk about stripping, you need to be very specific. People misunderstand. Enough said.

10.  Don’t polyurethane when your dog is shedding. Seriously. Especially if you have a black Lab and your cabinets are white.