Kitchen Progress: 3/4 Finished!

The old family office building, that is now our home, had a kitchenette area that wasn't big enough to convert into a real kitchen. You can see in the photo below that there is an A/C unit and a wall on the right. We just couldn't fit a dishwasher and a fridge in that space, and it would be necessary since that's the side the water is run on and it would otherwise be very expensive. We don't like expensive!

The kitchenette area of the office before demo.

We took out the two walls you see above to make the living room/kitchen one big space. You can see how thick the doorway into the back part of the house is. It is so thick because it is the old exterior wall. Everything behind it was an addition added later, which is why it is carpeted/concrete and the core of the home is wood flooring.

This is the left side (you can see the same wall on the right) after demo. There's an air vent that needed to be moved so we could put cabinets along that wall.

Please note the horrific state of the floors! The darker portion in the back is actually stained and damaged from some tremendously strong glue used to place down some vinyl kitchen flooring. We used what can be described as giant razor blades on broom sticks to scrape up the tile. We didn't think that floor was salvageable but luckily we found a great floor guy! 

My dorky sketch I made in Google Sketchup then colored in Photoshop of what I wanted the kitchen to look like. 

I decided the blue cabinets were too much with our blue monster couches, and opted for all stained. I might paint the back of the island still though! We went with a much lighter granite, too. I also nixed the long modern handles for shiny Martha Stewart boutique looking ones from Home Depot. If you're renovating your own kitchen, hardware is one of those things that creeps up on you when it comes to price. Luckily, it isn't a necessary thing so you can live without them entirely, or buy all upper and then all lower later. We just bought handles for drawers for a while because all together it came out to nearly $200 just for our rather modestly priced hardware.

I can assure you everything isn't this... orange. I guess I forgot to edit this photo! 

I am incredibly pleased with what we have so far. The granite is called Kashmire White (yes, with a K) and we got it for a steal at a local granite place. Home Depot had granite starting at $30 per square foot and we paid half that! More on that later.

You might also notice the change in the cabinet layout above the sink. We did that for symmetry's sake. Here are a few more photos:

You can see the antique hardwood floors in all their beautifully flawed glory. Looove it! I also chose to have two vertical drawer cabinets in the island since I couldn't fit them in anywhere else as I wanted Lazy Susans in the lower corners. I think the drawers also give the island a dresser look, as if it were a piece of furniture; at least that's what I was going for! Now we just have handles, beadboard backsplash, and lighting to accomplish!

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Painted Cabinets with Masking Tape Stencil Tutorial

There is a large office with cubbies for building plans in our house that I knew was perfect for a craft room. The walls, like most of the house, are a wood paneling so the room felt very dark and small despite being quite substantial in size. In addition to painting the walls white, I knew the cabinets needed a little perking up as well. The problem was that I didn't want to sand and paint or stain every bit of the wood, so I decided to just paint the doors. So that they wouldn't look unfinished, I needed to incorporate the wood tone on the painted doors themselves by using kind of a reverse stencil. 

Craft room cabinets before (entrance is to the right, you can see the door knob)

The cabinets are twice as deep as kitchen cabinets since there is a cubby area in the room directly behind it. 

Step 1: Take the doors off the hinges, remove all hardware and gently wipe down with fine grit sand paper to knock the shine off. Clean dust off twice, once to remove dust and again to fully clean, using rubbing alcohol or a household cleaner/wipe. 

Step 2: Using a ruler or L, decide how far from the edges of your cabinets you want your rectangle and make pencil marks as a guideline. I did 2 inches in from the edge all the way around. 

Step 3: Next, lay down four pieces of masking tape (one for each side) according to your marks to make a large rectangle. If you have made several marks 2 inches in along each side, you should be able to lay the tape down straight, using those marks as your guide. I lay my pieces down from edge to edge, and just leave the 2 excess pieces that aren't part of my rectangle that you see on the right, because it will be cut off when I make the rounded corners. 

Step 4: In the photo from Step 3, you can see that a white opaque square is created where the two pieces of masking tape overlap. Using this as your guide, take a piece of masking tape and lay it down so that the top edge goes across the corners of the small square on a diagonal. The one in the photo is a little bit off, but I fixed it later.

Step 5: Lay another piece of tape down immediately after the first. Overlap it just the tiniest bit to create a good seal so that paint doesn't seep through. Just try to keep this piece as straight and parallel to the first piece you laid down as possible. 

Step 6: Using a cup as your guide, cut away the excess from the piece you just laid down to create a curve, placing the cup as close to the inner edge o the last piece of tape you placed down as possible. To ensure that this curve is even and straight, pay attention to where you lay the cup. If you move it too far to the left or right, you will see how the curve would be uneven, so just move it around until it looks as even as possible. 

Step 7: Do the same thing to remove the outer corner of the rectangle, creating another curve that is 1 inch from the edge first cut you made, so that the entire curved piece you see in the photo above is 1 inch wide, the same width as the tape you are using. Cut away any excess including the two wings from the initial rectangle you made. 

This is what the finished taping process looks like. You can now apply stain or paint. If you don't want to fully sand your piece, consider Minwax Polyshades, a tinted polyurethane that works just like applying a stain and then polyurethane, but will dry on even unsanded surfaces because it doesn't soak into the wood or require rubbing off like stain does. Use a brand new  foam brush if you choose this method. I find it leaves the fewest bubbles. 

Step 8: I chose to use Olympic glossy paint in a light slightly aqua blue color, and my favorite Teflon Shur-line brush. Apply one generous coat (slightly thick) then lightly run the brush over the surface from end to end in quick sweeps to even out the surface. While the paint is wet, I used a clean Exacto to slice into the tape and pull it up. Be careful when you do this, and have a paper towel, plastic bag, or newspaper to stick it to as you go to keep it from falling back onto your painted door.

Voila! 

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