Long Awaited Kitchen Update

As I may have said before, my kitchen is about 80 percent complete. The floor and cabinets are done. We only need to do the countertops and paint the the walls.

I had previously said, I would just paint the countertops, but when we took them out, a weak spot broke. We currently have the old countertops with the broken space covered with a garbage bag because I am unsure of exactly what kind of countertops I want.

I wanted to include more details and pictures before I started with my bathroom progress.

After we took everything out of the kitchen, we laid vinyl plank flooring. We used vinyl plank, because I initially wanted to use laminate but learned that this wasn't the best idea for a place that could get wet regularly.

I used TrafficMaster Allure Resilient Vinyl Flooring.  Overall, it was easy to use. I'm not a directions reader so it took awhile for me to get the hang of it. Once I read the directions, it turned into a very easy job. I would suggest buying a vinyl tile cutter  to go along with it. It will make your life easier!

 

It all kind of snaps together with an adhesive that is already present on the tiles. If you make a mistake, you just carefully remove the tile and try again. Very easy!!! My kitchen is very small (about 7x9) and I used 2 boxes of this vinyl plank.

Do you like it? It have been about 4 months since I have installed it and it holds up beautifully. I have no issues or complaints with this.


As I said before, some of my cabinets had to be replaced. I ended up replacing four cabinets and keeping the rest. The new cabinets were unfinished, so I sanded and  primed them with 2 coats of a basic white primer. I decided to use Rustoleum Cabinet Tranformations to change their look. 

I have heard mixed reviews about this product. It seemed simple enough. I went to my local Home Depot to pick up the small kit. If you use cabinet transformations, keep in mind, that you have to get the base coat tinted to the color you want. If you just pick it up and take it home and paint, your cabinets will be white!

The very helpful gentlemen spoke with me about this kit as my paint mixed.  I mentioned I only intended on this taking a couple of days considering my kitchen is so small. He smirked and said it takes much longer. It took MUCH longer.

I chose English Cream since my kitchen is very small and I wanted to open it up as much as possible without going with white and still having a distinct color.

The transformations kit comes in four steps. The first step is the deglosser. MAKE SURE YOU ABSOLUTELY USE THIS! I actually missed the side of one of the higher cabinets because it wasn't deglossed, the paint turned out like this:

yucky, right?!

After the deglosser, you wait about an hour and then when your cabinets are dry, you move on to step 2. You paint the bond coat on the cabinets. The cabinets that were primed only needed two coats of the bond coat. The cabinets that were old needed three due to their darker color.  This took me about 2 weekends to complete. You must wait about 2-3 hours in between each coat to repaint. This was the step that took me the longest. I thought I would be on step two forever!

Finally after everything was painted and complete, I moved on to step 3 which is an optional step if you want the glaze on the cabinets. I did. This was relatively easy. You just paint the whole cabinet with the glaze and then wipe with the provided lint free cloths until you get your desired look. Because I am a perfectionist, this took me longer than I would like to admit.

The last step is the top coat. This goes on quickly and dries in about an hour.  I gave it 24 hours and then started putting everything back together, including some new brown knobs and drawer pulls that go great with it.

A before and after shot:

 The final product. It looks great! the pictures really don't do them justice.

Overall, I am happy that this turned out so great. It was easy, yet time-consuming, but I would do it again. What do you think? That was as far as I could go with the kitchen. I am still not 100% sure what I want to do for countertops or paint colors. Any ideas for me?