Kitchen Makeover

In 2010, the year before our two oldest kids got married, we made a major update to our kitchen.  We put in new flooring, new countertops, and got new stainless-steel appliances.  But rather than incurring the huge expense of replacing all of our kitchen cabinets, we had them painted instead.

We were most pleased with the outcome.

As anyone who has ever done it knows, redoing your kitchen is a major hassle.  Between having little to no access to your kitchen and having to either eat all your meals out or setting up a temporary small kitchen somewhere else in the house, it is a major disruption to your everyday way of life.  But interestingly, when we had the work done in 2010, it coincided with my wife and I taking two trips, one to Amsterdam and one to Los Angles.  So having been out of town for nearly two weeks, we missed most of the disruption in our lives.

Over the years, the kitchen fared well.  At one point, some of the paint on the cabinets had chipped off due to normal wear and tear and so I bought another bucket of paint to patch the unsightly scars.  But after 16 years, my wife decided it was time for a change.

She got the name of a highly recommended painter who came out and talked to us about repainting.  He felt the painted walls were in such good shape, that unless we were just tired of the medium brown color, that we should not paint the walls.  He then suggested that we should repaint the cabinets to match the trim color that we had painted in 2010.  And he even thought the trim paint color was alabaster.  He further said that by painting the cabinets a lighter color rather than a darker color, the beautiful countertops would standout much more.

He went on to explain that rather than using oil-based paint applied with brushes as the 2010 job had done, he would be removing all the doors and drawers and spray painting them in our garage using a new water-based paint.

However, when he submitted his quote for the job, to me it was about three times what I thought it should cost.  My wife and I pondered this for a few days, and I even went back to see if the price was negotiable (which it was not).  After he sent us a very impressive photo of a similar kitchen job his company had done (which I had also requested), my wife decided she really wanted him to do the work and so we gave him the go ahead.

I took a few “Before” photos a couple of days prior to them starting.  Then on a Wednesday morning, a large crew showed up and began to disassemble our cabinets.  Once all the doors and drawers had been moved into the garage, I heard electric sanders going for most of the day getting everything ready for paint primer.  I had to leave at 3 pm to pick up our granddaughter from her summer camp and take her to her piano lesson.  We normally have dinner on Wednesday night with our son and grandchildren, so we did not get back home until about 7:30 pm.  When I opened the garage door, I could see it had been transformed into a paint shop.

Looking closely, I could already see a nice smooth finish on the doors, and that was just primer revealing they had really done a thorough job of sanding them smooth.  Behind those two racks with primed cabinet doors, is the spray booth they had set up.  But my biggest surprise was when I walked from the garage into our kitchen.

I knew they were going to spray paint the doors and drawers, but I had assumed they would brush the paint onto the fixed caseworks.  Obviously, that was not the case and further explained the almost daylong prep work.  I was actually pleased to see it being painted this way as I knew the finish would look very nice.  But the downside was that we had no access to anything in the kitchen (not even the fridge which was behind a floor to ceiling plastic sheet to protect it from overspray).  The next morning, my wife and I obviously had to go out to breakfast.

That night, we planned to sleep at our son’s house while he was out of town with his daughter and we were keeping his 5-year-old son.  That meant we would have access to a working kitchen.  I went back over to our house Thursday afternoon to check on progress and was pleased to see the first coat of paint on the cabinets.

On Friday, we had hoped they would finish but likely due to higher humidity from rainstorms that day, the doors and drawers were not dry enough to receive their second coat.

But the caseworks had received their second coat which allowed them to remove all the protective plastic on Saturday.

When we returned home from our Saturday outing with our grandson, we got our first reveal of the finish.

With access to everything in the kitchen, we were now able to spend the night in our home, and I was even able to cook dinner.

Monday morning, the workers showed up early to put the kitchen back in order.  It took them most of the morning to finish.  And once they left, I came in to take my “After” photos.

Once I had gotten these photos, I examined the cabinets up close.

It looked to me like the cabinets had been finished this color at the factory as the surface was that smooth.

When the owner of the paint company came by, he explained that they had really sanded the cabinets a lot at the beginning to remove all traces of brush strokes.  That explained why I had heard so much sanding during the day on Wednesday.  He then said they additionally sanded after spraying primer and between the first and second coats of the sprayed paint.

His company’s approach left an amazing finish.  It also explained why the cost was more than I expected as there was so much manual labor involved.  And it resulted in a kitchen that we will enjoy for many years to come!