You guys, I have been eagerly waiting to type this post for everyone to read. I am going to say this all started back before Christmas when I started telling Adam that I had a lot of DIY things planned for us to start on when Spring came around. I had a list in my head of things I knew I wanted to update, and after we completed framing our bathroom mirror, I knew the kitchen was going to be the next project we were going to tackle. I also knew it was going to be a huge undertaking. Thankfully, Adam was fully on board and agreed that it was in desperate need of an update. April marked 3 years we have lived in our home. We have painted, added wainscoting, put in new floors, stained our bathroom vanity, etc to make it what we wanted. I am so in love with our house and our yard so I am pretty proud of all of these projects we are doing ourselves here and there to increase the value of it. I knew up front that staining our kitchen cabinets would be a very, very long process. I also knew my kitchen (in addition to our living room, the most used room in the house) would be a complete disaster for weeks, possibly months. Since I prepared my mind (and heart, lol) that this would be the case, I didn't stress out too much that our kitchen was way out of order for quite some time. And when I say too, I say that lightly. HA. You can ask Adam, I said on multiple occasions, "This is stressing me out. I can't handle this mess!" hahaha. He kept telling me it will all be worth it in the end.
I knew this was true so I kept calm and stained on.
;)
Since we stained our bathroom vanity, we knew what we were getting ourselves into. We knew it was not a difficult job to actually do, but we knew it was going to be time consuming.
The type of stain we used was General Finishes Gel Stain.
We decided to go with Georgian Cherry for our kitchen cabinets. Our bathroom was done in "Java", which was extremely dark, but that was the look we were going for in there. When it came to our kitchen, we both agreed we didn't want it as dark as our bathroom due to the fact we had a black refrigerator and white appliances. I knew a black fridge with "black looking" cabinets would not look good together. So this is the reason we chose cherry. But when you look at our "after" photos of our updated kitchen, you will notice our cabinets look really dark! And they are much darker than we expected them to turn out but I surprisingly (and thankfully) love them!
Our original cabinets were the builder grade oak cabinets with nasty, ugly brass hardware. Our countertops were even uglier since they were solid white (White! ugh!) laminate countertops. Our house was built in 2001 so I guess the thing to do back then was to install the ugliest cabinets and countertops ever imaginable. Since the counters were white, every spill of juice, food, etc stained. I would spend a lot of my time scrubbing them just so they looked shiney and clean.
I am going to start off by saying prepping our cabinets for stain really did not require much time. All of my research said not to spend a lot of your time sanding. (because this is a gel stain, it's very thick and reminds you of pudding/jelly. It's not the "wet" stain where you wipe on, wipe off, repeat. That kind of stain requires tons of sanding) So we lightly sanded and then wiped off with a damp rag.
Also, while I sanded, Adam prepped the floors. I went to Dollar General in the mail section and purchased the brown paper that you can wrap boxes with for shipment purposes. It was $1.00. He went around the bottom of all cabinets and used painters tape to stick it down. This was for the purpose of staining the bottom trim and not worring about it leaking onto the floor. Adam has lots of paitence so this was the perfect job for him. :)
I am almost positive I have an actual "before" picture of the kitchen but I guess it occured to me after we took some of our cabinets doors off to take a picture.
You can see here that we had completed a few coats of stain on certain cabinets and the rest still awaited us to make our way over to that side of the kitchen.
See what I mean about the brown paper being taped on the floor? I knew I could be somewhat messy when I did the trim knowing it would not go on the floor. You can also see the doors off. Yikes. Before you ask, we took this time to clean out our cabinets. :)
Here is the desk/computer area.
This is a true "before" shot.
When this picture was taken, only 1 coat of stain had been applied. (we used a sock to apply and then stuck with using foam brushes the rest of the time. I bought them at Dollar General for $1.00 per pack)
Notice all the wood grain you still see? That is why we ended up having to do 3-4 coats.
There may have been 2 or so Saturdays where we sent the kids to their grandparents so we could put in a lot of time on the cabinets and focus on that job the majority of the day. Otherwise, once we put the kids to bed at 8:00 every night, I was in the kitchen staining while Adam was in the garage staining the cabinet doors. Front and back. ughh. So much time! But to be fair, the back of our cabinets are not "perfect" like the fronts are. It's just not. Our little secret! ;)
We didn't stain every single night, just most nights. We did take breaks because their were many nights where we said we were "over this" project and just wanted to watch HGTV. :)
We did a section of cabinets at a time. It made it easier to focus on a certain amount to make sure you covered everything nicely and not got in too much of a hurry to accomplish a larger section just to be done faster.
You can see we were making some progress! You can also notice some of the staining looks uneven. :( We noticed that, too. So at times, I felt like we were taking two steps backwards instead of making any progress at all. Very discouraging. Here is another reason our cabinets turned out a little darker than we expected. To really cover the oak color plus the wood grain, we had to keep going over it to get it to all look even.
And notice those bright white appliances?! Originally we decided we would keep them. Even though they were white, they were in perfect working condition. Well, as we got closer to the end of our staining days, all I could see was how BRIGHT those white appliances were against my dark cabinets. They became an eyesore and we both agreed new appliances were now a must. I mean, might as well, right?!
Here's a view of our island.
The island was the last piece we stained.
I'm going to stop here to say we received 3 quotes for our countertops. This was also a lengthy process as well. We decided to go with Premier Stone Surfaces out of Chattanooga. SO glad we did. The people were wonderful and the technology they use is mind blowing. Adam and I made a trip to their warehouse on Friday during our Spring Break.
This is what we saw:
Plus more slabs that I couldn't fit in the picture.
Adam and I knew exactly what we were looking for. Definitely nothing dark and nothing "busy" in design. I knew I didn't like the look of big stripes throughout the granite, I wanted it more speckled. The whole process of how granite works is amazing to learn.We learned a lot that morning about granite and the "veins" or "tiger stripes" that can be seen in some of the slabs. So it was real easy to walk right past something that looked too "busy" for our taste. Thankfully we fell in love with one and knew it would work perfect for our kitchen and color scheme! Adam thought it would be smart to bring a fully stained cabinet door with us so we could hold it up against the different colored granite and see what looked best with that color of stain. Glad he thought of that because that helped a ton!
We also picked out what kind of sink we wanted as well. I was SO excited about getting a new sink. It's an under mount sink and I love how deep and big it is!
We were told it would take 3 weeks before installation would happen which was fine since we still had more staining to do anyway. They sent a man to the house to measure everything about a week and a half after we visited their shop in Chattanooga. Adam left work for a little bit on that day to meet with him and see how they do it. He said it's all done my laser and was really cool to watch. After that, it was the waiting game. Then I finally got the call as to when they would be coming to install it. I came home on May 7th to beautifully installed countertops! What a relief! We were almost done!
-But-
I had to live without countertops for 2 days--- which meant no sink! Which also meant I washed some of our dishes in our bathtub. I told Adam I didn't think I could live in a house that was getting totally remodeled like you see some families do on TV. Whew, my poor nerves could not handle that.
Here is what we had to work around! Difficult to say the least.
The island STILL was not completed and what you see is the 3rd coat! It took 4 coats to cover this thing!
This is what my dining room looked like for a couple of days.
Pure madness!
By moving everything off of my countertops, I only realized how much crap we had.
I want to say thanks to my dad for helping Adam pull up our old countertops and for helping him install our new appliances- he's the best!!!
Our goal was to be completely, 100% finished with staining before our granite was installed. We also decided to buy new appliances and I wanted those installed before hand, too. Adam and I had a Saturday/Saturday night to ourselves the weekend before May 7, so we spent the entire day in Murfreesboro shopping and picking out appliances! It was a lot of fun and we ended up getting the best deal at Electronic Express. Trust me, I did a lot of research on stainless steel appliances to find the best prices between Lowe's, Sears, Home Depot, Best Buy, etc. Electronic Express had them all beat. I have to be honest and say I am not a big fan of stainless steel. That is because I hate to see finger prints and smudges and I know for a fact it would irritate me so bad if I had to see that every single day. I did my research and learned they make a "smudge proof" stainless steel so I was sold! While we were in the different stores browsing, we would put our hands all over it (because duh, we knew our kids would do that same thing if it was in our kitchen) and we instantly (and obviously) knew which brand we did not want. Electronic Express had Frigidaire Gallery on display and that is when we learned that anytime you see the word "Gallery" at the end of Frigidaire, it meant it was smudge proof. Score! I was so relieved. We purchased the stove, microwave and dishwasher and took it home that day.
The appliances were installed that weekend and our countertops were installed a few days after that on Wednesday, May 7. Since then, we have been enjoying our new kitchen so much! Landon still talks about "the man who put in our counters", as he says.
Before I show our "after" pictures, let me just say that if you have been contemplating updating your kitchen, go for it! But know in advance that it is time consuming, messy, tiring, and I could go on and on. BUT, if you know that in advance, then you will be just fine. :)
The gel stain really is very very easy to use.
My exact steps each time I stained were:
plastic glove (purchased from Dollar General)
men's white sock over glove/or foam brush (your preference)
and that's it!
Do light strokes and follow the grain. Don't go against it. One dab of stain on your brush will go a long way. Trust me. After your 1st coat, it will look extremely ugly and streaky, but keep the faith! It's suppose to look like that so don't worry. You have to let your 1st coat (and EVERY coat you do) dry for 24 hours!!! Do not try to stain before that time period is up. It's just not worth the possible mess up of your cabinets.
We went through a lot of stain and every can was purchased from amazon.com.
I need to add, after all 3-4 coats were applied, and after everything was dry, we did two coats of Polyacrylic. It's a clear liquid that goes ontop of the stain to preserve it and make it shine. It makes the look of your stained cabinets complete! That was also purchased through Amazon.
We also picked out new hardware for all cabinet doors and drawers as well. Which was a given. That ugly brass HAD to hit the road.
So proud of our work!
I would like to say we are completely done with this space, but we aren't just yet! We will be adding a back splash as well. I am ok without one, but Adam is really adamant about doing it so I definitely will not argue! ;) We would have added one when we were doing everything else but ran out of DIY cash. lol. We did our entire kitchen in cash which I am super proud to say! Most of you know we follow Dave Ramsey and do everything on a cash basis so once you use it up, we are content enough with waiting a little while until we have a few hundred bucks back in our DIY envelope. I'll be sure to post pictures of that process once we do it!
I hope you love the difference as much as we do!! From golden oak to nice dark cherry! What a change!
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