Sand & (Sun) Stain

Throughout my kitchen experience I have been sharing with you, behind the scenes I was not on vacation with sand & sun but busy with the cabinets!  

This was my favorite part, 1. because it saved me literally thousands of dollars (which I spent elsewhere) and 2. It allowed me and my boyfriend to choose the style and color we want.

I bought unfinished cabinets at Lowe’s with my Lowe’s credit card and saved 5% on all the cabinets, which basically covered most of the tax on them.

Buying unfinished cabinets saved me thousands of dollars, I bought all my cabinets and the stain and sand paper for under one thousand dollars. Which sounds like a lot to some people but -  is actually a fraction of what the custom cabinets would have cost us.

We began the cabinets when we first started renovating the kitchen and started an assembly line in the basement. We had to sand them all and then stain 2-3 coats on every part. We took the drawers and cabinet doors off as well. After staining each layer, we needed to sand the surface once it dried with super fine sand paper.

Once all the black stain was on and smooth, we needed to apply 2 layers of polyurethane.  We found that water-based poly was best, easy to clean and use compared to oil-based. After the poly we had to once again sand but this time with fine steel wool to make a super smooth finish.

I would recommend this process to anyone looking to save money; however, prepare for long nights and “one more door”. One more door always turned into getting to bed at 2am.

Because of all the time and brain cells this project consumed, I did find help with the flooring by hiring the same company that refinished the rest of my house when I moved in. This allowed for me to have consistent flooring throughout my home with the same stain color, it also made the house feel bigger and easier for cleaning the floors with one surface type. There are real reviews on Tile vs Hardwood on Zillow's Advice Thread. I did choose hardwood floors for my kitchen over a tile option, which is becoming more popular on shows on HGTV.

I love the floors and am super happy with my decision! (makes mopping a breeze & no worrying about dirty grout lines!) I also love my cabinets, well worth the work and the money savings allowed me to get the new flooring and shiny/sparkly things I will share later!!

 

Peeling Away History

My house was built in 1954. Every time one of the previous owners decided on new flooring for the kitchen, they must have just put the new flooring right on top of the existing flooring.

The first layer was the glossy, very slippery when wet, tile. I had fallen twice, and broke a toe nail because the floors were super slick. It had turned into a major safety hazard since the backdoor was right there, and in Michigan any time it rained or snowed (which is all the time) the glossy tiles would get wet.

The gloss tiles were mortared onto several layers of linoleum. Once the gloss tiles were broken off the ground, which took hours, we took a break and left the old linoleum flooring for about a week. Since we knew that once we took out the rest of the flooring we would need to take out the cabinets. The older layers of floor went underneath the cabinets. Since we were not ready to say goodbye to our kitchen sink and counter space yet, we figured one more week would be best.

 

Once we decided to take out all of the flooring, we took it down to the sub-floor and could see into the basement. When we took everything out, flooring and cabinets, my step dad realized that a previous owner cut out some of the sub-floor and support beams underneath the sink area for some reason. We needed to correct this. He added 2x4’s in place where the support beams had previously been cut out. We added ply wood where the subfloor was missing. In doing this, we had to drill out 1” holes for the plumbing to still be accessible for the sink.

For all the tile and garbage we couldn’t put most things out to the curb on garbage day so we bought this big green bag sold at Home Depot and Lowe’s that are made by Waste Management called Bagster. We fill the bag and schedule a pick up time online with Waste Management and they come collect the whole bag from the front yard. It ended up costing like $30 for the bag and then $100 for them to pick it up, but it was worth the hassle of finding somewhere else to take it, which was probably going to cost money as well. I would recommend the “Green bags” to any one working on a project where there are bulky items that cannot be put out with regular trash. The Bagster @ Lowe's

We took the bottom cabinets we removed to the curb on garbage day (my city picks up bigger items, as long as there are no drawers or any some parts attached) because there were many oil stains inside and the configurations weren’t best for the space. In the corner of the kitchen, instead of using a lazy Susan or cabinet designed for a corner, there were two cabinets glued together and there was a ton of wasted storage space.

So we scrapped the lower cabinets but we decided to keep the upper cabinets for a possible bar in the basement, a future project I am thinking about starting this summer J.