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Amy did something ah-MAZE-balls: she turned one weekend into a completely remade kitchen using the same Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations kit that I used for the bathrooms.
Yes, you read that right – one. weekend. new. kitchen. And she didn’t stop there. She also did two bathroom vanities, bathroom vanities, a pantry cabinet, two wooden chests, two armoire dressers, a headboard, corresponding night stands… and I’m pretty sure there’s a partridge and pear tree somewhere in their house with a coat of paint, too. I’m exhausted just thinking of the energy that must take with a two-year-old running around.
I know – sounds impossible, right? And instead of just giving you a teaser with only a before and after, I’ve decided that the Ugly Duckling House: Daring Design series should begin with a guest post by Amy – telling us how she did it!
Hi, UDH followers! I’m Amy. I am a stay at home mom to a beautiful two year old girl named Hannah, and happily married to my hubby, Eric, for seven years this fall.
I love taking on home renovation projects, so when we bought this house a year and a half ago I was anxious to get started on the reno’s. The house is only three years old, but the finishes chosen were not to our taste. We hated the flooring, and the cabinets, but we knew we would be able to handle DIY reno-ing those ourselves (while sticking to a budget), so we bought the house and haven’t looked back. I believe that in order to know how you want to renovate a room, you have to live with it for a while. You have to see it under different lighting through the different seasons, and feel out it’s functions. So in our case our cabinets more then served there function so we were happy to refinish them, but sanding them seemed like a TON of work. Then we stumbled upon Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations, which = no sanding. So after reading SEVERAL reviews, we decided this was the best product for our needs, so next we just had to select a color, and a good time to get started on the project. Selecting a color was super easy, I wanted it to match our china cabinet (as it’s all one great big open concept room and I love the color of my china cabinet). So it all came down to when could we make it happen, which was this past weekend.
Here’s a few before shots of what it looked like before….
And here’s a breakdown of how we did it:
- Friday 5pm – Eric gets home from work, and finishes taking the cabinet doors off the hinges(we started doing this Thursday night and taping off the areas we didn’t want paint to get as we knew it would be time consuming and it definitely was – all in all cabinet door removal and taping took over 5hrs). We first drew a diagram of the cabinets assembled in our kitchen numbering each cabinet door on the back with painters tape (so there was no guess work when it was time to put it all back together). I bought paper cups to put the corresponding hinges in, also numbered with the corresponding door (Rustoleum’s diagram pretty much layed out how to do it so check out there web page for the specific hows to’s)
- Friday 7pm – start deglossing the cabinets – this step is labour intensive, but I kept reminding myself much easier then sanding all the cabinets – you are supposed to degloss everything then wipe it all down and let it dry for an hr – but by the time I was done wiping everything down, it had been an hour
- Friday – 8:30pm – First coat of the bond coat….loving the color – need to let it dry 2-3 hrs (which is pretty much how long it took to paint all our cabinets, the cabinet frames, two vanity cabinets and two vanity doors).
- Saturday – 12:30 am – Apply Second coat of the bond coat to the backs of the doors and cabinet frames
- Saturday – 2:30 am – Apply the first coat of the bond coat to the fronts of the cabinet doors (which Eric did on his own as I had fallen asleep, what can I say I need my sleep…)
- Saturday – 9am – Apply second coat of the bond coat to the fronts of the cabinets, and start decorative glazing the cabinet frames (this step we only applied two the front of the cabinet doors and frames, and it definitely helped define the wood grain, and made the cabinets less flat). The decorative glaze needs 8 hrs to dry. So during those 8 hours we did all of the above steps to a pantry, two wooden chests, two dressers, two nightstands, a massive headboard – minus the door fronts as we ran out of workspace (so that’s the 90% finished part as we still have to do the door fronts, the drawers are all done just not the fronts of the doors)
- Saturday 9pm – Apply Protective Top Coat to the backs of the doors and cabinet frames, let dry over night (or 12 hrs)
- Sunday 9am – Apply Protective Top Coat to the front of the doors and let dry 12 hrs, which we only did 10hrs before rehanging the cabinet doors (as they felt dry to the touch as seemingly were as there’s no sign of smudges or fingerprints on the doors)
- Sunday – 7pm – rehang cabinet doors, and install new hardware – loving it!! Looks soooo good, our kitchen was made to be this dark.
- Monday Morning – Hubby is putting some molding underneath the cabinets to hide our new under-cabinet lighting
And here are the after pics:
We also did two of our bathroom vanities, a pantry cabinet, two wooden chests, two armoire dressers, a headboard and corresponding night stands, so not bad for three of the small kits (which costs about $79.99 a kit) . And especially not bad for getting all done in a weekend.
Thank you for sharing your project with us, Amy! Remember to grab your Daring Design award button. And for more of her DIY projects, head over to Amy’s blog, Our Crazy Beautiful Life.
