How To: Transform your Kitchen for under $100

When Joe and I first moved into our house, we loved everything about it--except the kitchen. We didn't pay much attention through our walk through, but the kitchen cabinets were boring, washed out, and looked dated. After buying the house, we most certainly didn't have any money for a kitchen remodel--so we had to come up with a plan. During one of our many Home Depot trips (once you own a home, that place becomes your favorite store), we saw a man buying this Rust-Oleum kitchen kit and we asked him about it. Apparently this guy was a contractor that used these kits regularly to spruce up people's kitchens on a budget. He told us that he had  tried the sanding-and-painting route and it was so exhausting he would never do it again--but he loved these kits and couldn't say enough great things about it. We knew we had to buy it!

We finally built up the motivation to actually do it, and we went down to Home Depot and picked out our color. We wanted DARK cabinets--so we got the darkest they offered. I believe the color was 'Kona.' As you can see by the picture, they have almost every cabinet option you can imagine--so it makes it usable for anyone.  

These kits cost around $80, but you have to buy some extra supplies (listed on the side of the box)

The left/right pictures are the differences between having a decorative glaze and not having one.

We took our kit home and watched the quick DVD that it came with to see the process of how it works--its SO easy. It isn't hard whatsoever, its just time consuming. We spent our entire Saturday and Sunday working from 8am to 9pm both days to finish our entire kitchen, but that hard work is absolutely worth it. Here's a quick run down of how it works:

1. Take all of the cabinet doors and drawers off. Take those out to the garage and set up a work space out there with a big drop cloth. The first step is cleaning the cabinets. Soap and warm water--give them a quick scrub, then dry them off.

2. Strip them. No sanding required; the kit comes with a solution and a scrub pad for you to get the shine off of the cabinets.

3. Wash them again. Warm water and some soap--you want to make sure you get all of the de-glosser off. Dry with a towel.

4. First coat of whatever color you choose. You have to make sure to put it on along with the grain of the wood to make it look natural. Let dry.

5. Second coat of whatever color you choose. Let dry.

6. Decorative glaze. In the picture above where you can see all of the different color options, the left/right pictures are with and without the glaze. Some of them make a huge difference, some of them make no difference at all. As you can see with the darkest color, it doesn't make hardly any difference--so we skipped this step.

7. Final step--glossy finish. This step goes fast, but make sure there are no 'drips' because they will dry that way.

...then you just wait for it to dry, then put all of the cabinets back on! While we did this, Joe was in the garage working on all of the cabinets, and I was in the kitchen doing all of the cabinet frames (which was equally as much of a pain in the butt). 

When we attached the doors back on to the cabinets, we bought new hinges to replace the old outdated copper-looking ones. We also bought hardware to attach to the doors and drawers--little details like those make the transformation even more great. We love how everything turned out and have even recommended this kit to family and friends--both of which have gone on to use it. This kit is a great alternative to spending thousands on new kitchen cabinets. 

You cant tell in this picture, but these cabinets were a mess! They were so dirty!

The starting point. Joe numbered each cabinet so he'd know where it went when we finished.

The cabinet frames that I would be working on.

...coming along.

Done!!

Such a huge difference, right?!

We even did all of our bathroom cabinets. This is the master bath "before"

...and this is the 'after' (we added hardware after this picture was taken)

Now we just have top buy some granite counter tops for the kitchen and bathrooms and it will look like completely different spaces! I cant wait for new counter tops ;)