Kitchen Redo- Edging Choices

While my husband was working on the doors, I was busy staining the drawers. After I finished sanding the top of the drawer, I began sanding the edging of it. That is when I found out that the edging was pressed wood which is basically, from my understanding, little pieces of wood pressed together to make a bigger piece of wood. This type of wood does not take stain well at all. So we had to figure out what to do with it. 

A black edge was my husbands choice.

This was with three coats of stain.

And this was with some really old stain that was here when we moved in on top of several coats of the previous stain. 

We ultimately went with the really old stain.

To see the before and after pictures click here.

To see the sanding process click here.

To see the painting and staining process click here. 

To see the mess we created click here.

To see the cabinet doors click here.

Kitchen Redo- Cabinet Doors

After we finished the part that was inside we put all our kitchen items back on the shelves and our kitchen became functional again albeit without doors, but I wasn't about to complain. The only thing we still couldn't use was the drawers. We moved our work outdoors. My husband cut and routered out the middle paneling of the doors. He actually found out that the entire back was just a piece of paneling. It took some work, but he finally just had the frames left. By this time we were both in such a hurry to get everything done, I didn't take very many pictures the way a good blogger should. Sorry, but I needed my kitchen put back together.

So fast forward picture wise to the part where the door frames were sanded...

Because we took off the back of the doors, we had to replace them with something. We settled on plywood. At the hardware store we found sheets of floor boards. We didn't know they were floor boards at the time, but that is what we used. We cut them to size, and glued them to the frame. 

The boards came with markings on one side of them, so we had to sand that off, and cut an angle to match the doors, and cut out the notches where the hardware went to connect the doors to the cabinets.

Again, with a lack of pictures, sorry, sorry, sorry. But once the back was glued and dried to the frame and the marks and words were all sanded off the back, we finally began staining the doors. Like with the skeleton of the cabinets in the house, we stained with golden oak and put polyurethane on top. This process took about 3-4 days just for staining the doors because we need to allow everything to dry before adding the next coat.

To see before and after pictures click here.

To see the sanding process click here.

To see the painting and staining process click here.

To see the mess click here.

Kitchen Redo- The Mess

If you are thinking about starting this messy job, be warned! This is what we lived with for a month or so.

This was on our kitchen table that sits right outside the kitchen. It was incredibly dusty. We actually had to clean all our kitchen things before we could put them away after we finished because the dust got everywhere. Cover your things if you can!

Our living room was taken over. Anytime we wanted something, we would have to dig for it in this mess. I even tried to organize all the stuff when we were moving out of the kitchen, but it didn't work very well.

Look at how clean it was when we finally got to put everything away! 

We also finally were able to eat at our table. This was our first meal after a month of not being able to use it. We were so happy. Even my husband was happy enough to let me take a picture of him smiling!

To see the before and after pictures click here.

To see the sanding process click here.

To see the painting and staining process click here.