Pantry Organization

BEFORE

Making great use of waste to hold canned goods. Thinking that making coating the boxes with glue and covering with scrapbooking paper would add extra strength, I covered them in glue. But I never did add the scrapbooking paper. They work just fine for smaller cans like soup.

AFTER

The key was to put the things the kids get themselves like cereal down where they can reach them and the things they shouldn't be getting into like candy up higher where it is most difficult for them to reach.

Snap Grommet Curtains

Well before we started our kitchen redo…

We were stuck in a rut. Same window covers, same dirty carpet, same kitchen, same everything except for paint as the day we moved into our house. I am the type of person that needs and craves change be it little or big. Usually its as simple as moving some furniture around. This time, I have the craving for a change in curtains. Every time I opened and closed the curtain, the rope you had to pull on would hurt my hand. They were also white, not a good color for a family with young kids and a dog. It was also bright when we wanted it dark. To curb the curtain craving, I researched different ways to make blackout curtains. It came to my attention that making them from a new store-bought piece of fabric would actually be more expensive than buying already made curtains and fixing them up so they hung the way I wanted them to. After a trip to Walmart I had enough curtain rods and curtains to cover a very large window, a sliding door/window, and a medium sized bedroom room window. I also bought a product called snap grommets. 

The grommets come with a little tool for you to draw the middle and the circle on your fabric so you can cut out the right sized hole for the grommet. I know its hard to see, but that's what I did in this picture. Right in the middle is a little "x" with the circle around it. Unfortunately the grommets didn't come with an easy way to get the hole started. For this I used a butcher knife, cut into the center, then used my fabric scissors to cut the hole. Although it worked really well I didn't take any pictures of this. I just couldn't figure out how to maneuver a butcher knife, fabric, and a camera at the same time. =) Make sure that before you jump into this, you measure out where you want the grommets placed.

The hole is cut. 

It is called snap grommet for a reason, all you do is put it both sides on and press together. Very easy and simple.

Trial run. When I took the curtains out of the package they were obviously creased from being shoved in a tiny little package. After I made sure it look alright I tossed them (snap grommets and all) in the dryer with a damp towel. 

And, tada  they were done. Bad lighting, sorry. My college lighting teacher would be super frustrated with this and most of the pictures I post on here. Sorry professor.

Because the store bought windows did not meet the window measurements, they were too long and not wide enough, I bought three, cut one in half, and sewed the whole ones to the halves as well as shortened them. If you look closely in the picture below on the right and left sides of the curtain you can see where I sewed the halves to the wholes so it would open in the middle. 

Super easy and totally changed the look in our house. The perfect amount of change for the moment. (Little did I know that the kitchen project would be very very soon at that moment!)

Kitchen Redo- Kickboard

The final step so far in our kitchen redo was to add a kick board. We had the same dark wood around the base of our cupboards. It had to go. This was a pretty easy part. Because of the way the previous kick board was installed, it was best to simply cover it with new stuff. Measure, cute, stain, nail, and done! =)

We had a super little helper!

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.

To see edging choices click here.

To see how we added a cutting board shelf click here.

Kitchen Redo- Adding a Cutting Board Shelf

The was the demo part of our "remodel." After using our kitchen for a few years we know where we cut things, mix things, and make things. It only made sense to put items that we use for cutting, for example, on the side of the kitchen that we cut things. Granted my kitchen is very tiny so walking across it to grab the cutting boards was not that big of a challenge, but it makes things so much more convenient when they are already right where you need them to be. So, to solve the cutting board dilemma, my husband created a cutting board shelf. We had, and still have, a large amount of wasted space which drives me crazy, but we can only do so much at a time. Right next to our drawers, we had a thin space that would be perfect for holding a few cutting boards.

We first had to make sure there was nothing behind where we wanted the shelf. We took off the side panel to find what we expected, wasted space. See all the space behind the drawers? They could be that much deeper or there could be something else done with that space! Ugh, wasted space!!!

After we knew we could make this work we took out the front panel with a screwdriver and hammer.

We created a bottom shelf and back, again out of the material we used for the doors.  There was already a panel on the inside part of the space (next to the drawers) so we didn't need to add anything there.

Here is a close up of how we got the bottom shelf to attach to the sides. We just notched out a space to slide the new bottom in.

Because there was already supporting boards on the front of the unit, we just had to rest the bottom of the shelf on it. We did, however, need to cut a notch out of the side to go around the 2 x 4 toward the front. 

Before we put the final side panel on, this is what it looked like.

Front panel

Stained

The counters are actually really crooked so this did happen, but not to worry because we will cover it with corner molding. 

We still don't have the corner on, but it looks pretty good!

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.

To see edging choices click here.

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.

Kitchen Redo- Painting & Staining

We had leftover paint that we knew we could use. Yellow from our main floor and brown from our bathroom. To decide, we painted one cupboard brown and one yellow. 

Brown

Yellow

We settled on brown. I really actually thought the yellow would be fun-add a pop of color from inside since we plan on repainting our yellow kitchen and dining room a different color anyway. But brown was the safe choice and my hubby likes to lean toward the safe side.  Me, I'm more bold.

Here is the pre-stained inside painted look.

Again, no stain yet.

We went with golden oak color for the stain. 

It looks different in different light. Even now that we've had the cabinets done for 3-4 months they look different in different light.

We really wanted to get the inside done because our house was a mess and our kitchen was un-usable and we hadn't sat at our table to eat for a really really long time. Oh, and our living room was taken over by all the kitchen innards. We focused on getting the entire inside finished before we started working on the doors. 

When the painting and staining was done, we covered the stain with a few coats of polyurethane. Luckily we did this part while the air wasn't so cold and could open our windows because the fumes were terrible!

To see the before and after pictures click here.

To see the sanding process click here.

Kitchen Redo- Sanding

I decided to break down all the steps we took to accomplish our kitchen makeover. After we removed all the doors and shelves, we started sanding. This is what we did for an entire 2-3 weeks. Every spare moment we had, we were sanding. 

In this post here, I mentioned how we just wanted to see if the skeleton of the cabinets would be stainable, this is where we started and why we had to keep going. Huge difference between the dark and what was under there!

It already felt brighter with just the outsides rid of that dark stain.

See all the dust on the stove? My kids loved getting their little fingers on it whenever mom and dad weren't watching. =)

I highly suggest wearing a mask. Yes it looks silly, but look at all the light brown on my shirt. That is all dust just from working right in that little spot. Also if you don't want dust all over everything in your house, you should probably cover it. We didn't have that luxury so we were vacuuming our entire house on a daily basis. That dust got EVERYWHERE!

The insides of the cabinets were that laminate stuff that is not stainable. So, we decided to paint the insides. Before we did that, we sanding the walls inside to rough it up a bit so the paint would stick to it better.

To see the before and after pics click here.