After being handed over the keys to my new home, I was plagued with serious buyer’s remorse. I couldn’t believe that I had spent so much money on such a dump. I guess that’s what you get for spending 750k in the San Francisco Bay Area – a dump. The dreary backdrop of the leafless trees and cold March winds only augmented the nastiness of the situation. My in-laws home, where my husband and I had been staying (yes, I lived with my in-laws and even shared a twin bed with my husband for the first 6 months of our marriage!) was a dream in comparison to this cold, cheerless, little hobbit hole.
The problem: The house was built circa 1960 and definitely looked the part. The kitchen’s tannish plywood cabinets, coated in a thin film of cooking grease, which clung to the air, and cheesy faux-wood laminate countertops would probably even make Laura Ingalls Wilder run for the prairie. The worst part of the kitchen was the fact that the previous owner had lined all of the cabinets with wood-patterned contact paper – classy.
The solution: My husband and I avoided the kitchen for about two months. After about two months of not stepping foot into the kitchen and not cooking a single thing, we noticed that the grease odor had dissipated. We slowly began to incorporate the kitchen into our lives, even sharing a few takeout meals in there. While eating in the kitchen, we would frequently comment on what an eyesore the cabinets were. The ugliness was so compelling that one day we finally set about the task of painting them, which is a cheap alternative to enhancing the appeal of your cabinets if you can’t afford to replace them. WARNING: If you have a life or have the money, we don’t recommend that you paint as it can be a long process. However, having neither a life nor the money (mortgage payments and 401k contributions sucking every dime out of my paycheck), I resolved to ‘update’ the cabinets with a fresh coat of paint.
Since our kitchen is small, I decided that white and not espresso (the color I was originally favoring) was most appropriate. We bought 3 gallons of primer and several cans of ‘antique white’ semi-gloss paint from Kelly-Moore (Note: Check your company to see if they have any perks or company discounts at home improvement stores; my husband’s company actually had a discount code for Kelly-Moore, which reduced the cost of a can of semi-gloss paint from $45 to $32). After extensive web research (hey, we’re busy people) on painting cabinets, we proceeded to unhinge all our cabinets (22 in total) and rubbed down all our cabinetry in a diluted ammonia solution to remove the grease build-up. We then gently wiped off the ammonia solution and let the cabinets dry overnight. After the cabinetry had completely dried, we rolled on several coats of primer (this project took multiple days). Exhausted from the work, my husband and I took a 3-week break and once again distanced ourselves from the kitchen. However, the kitchen’s mystical forces once again lured us back and we finally applied the final coat of antique white semi-gloss paint. As we began the process of re-hinging the cabinets one-by-one (usually one a day since we like to take projects in small steps, very small steps) the kitchen started coming together. When we re-hinged the last cabinet door, the clouds broke and the birds sang – it was beautiful. Our kitchen was actually somewhat presentable now – and it had only taken us 4 full fun-filled, glorious weekends. We couldn’t resist and applied a fresh layer of paint to our kitchen walls to complete the project (we didn’t bother stripping the walls with ammonia or applying primer this time and it turned out pretty well). We are now in the process of finding some cheap granite stores to swap out the laminate countertops with some good-looking rock. If you do a little research yourself or pester your friends who are house-buffs, you will definitely be able to find cheap granite stores with installation services – and at better rates than Home Depot or Costco! Some places that I’ve found in the Bay area include:
Granite & Stone Expo
1722 Junction Ave Ste E&C, SJ
(408) 437-9891
KZ Kitchen Cabinet
2128 N 1st St,
(408) 441-1288
Union Stone
(408) 988-6888
And hence our kitchen remodeling project: $110.23 for primer + wall and cabinet paint + labor (free – we only used our own blood, sweat, and tears, which makes it free). One thing I will mention is that you should be careful when painting your cabinet drawers. I was a little over eager and applied too heavy a coat to the cabinet drawers and now the drawers don’t slide as easily. The fact that I now need bulging finger muscles to open the kitchen drawers doesn’t matter as much to me since I am the queen of takeout and plasticware, but if you don’t want to have to battle your drawers to access the silverware, be light on the paint job for your drawers or don’t even bother painting the bottoms at all – give yourself a freebie.
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