Painting Kitchen Cabinets is No Joke

We've had a lot going on over the past few months and I'm not coping well. So naturally, I decided to paint our kitchen cabinets.I know what you're thinking: No big deal, right? That's what I thought too. Have you all heard of the blog Young House Love? I'm so inspired by those two! They had a post back in 2008 about painting kitchen cabinets, in which painting kitchen cabinets sounded easy peasy. I'm here to tell you that it wasn't.

Not that they were off the mark. Oh no...this one was all me, people.

My biggest mistake? Trying to tackle the project by myself while the hubs was out of town, which means everything took me twice as long.

Overall, it wasn't hard work...it was a lot of work. Taking everything out of the cupboards and drawers, removing doors and drawers, sanding, cleaning, priming, painting, waiting for paint to dry, painting some more, waiting some more, hanging cabinet doors (more on that in a bit) and adding hardware. Nothing was super strenuous, but you put it all together over a several week period and you get the picture.

Speaking of pictures: here's a before shot (please excuse bad lighting and the use of my iPhone):

Here are a few during shots:

After all of that work sanding, taping, priming, painting and watching paint dry my husband stepped in (thank GOD) to help me hang the cabinet doors. He's super handy when I'm not busy thinking I should do everything myself.

This is also about the time he looked at me like I was crazy for not keeping the hinges with their corresponding doors. The hardware all looked the same to me. Little did I know, each hinge was adjusted perfectly for each cabinet. So, since this smarty pants had taken off the hinges and put them all in a big bag, we spent several hours getting the doors back up. I like to call this my second biggest mistake.

In the end, the cabinets turned out great and we couldn't be happier. Phew!

We went with a gray/green color since we were working with much of what was already in the kitchen when we moved in (besides the appliances). We have black granite counter tops, pinkish/tan floor tiles, an off-white wall color and crisp white molding. We decided to stay away from white because we thought it might contrast too much with everything else in the kitchen and I did NOT want anything bringing out the pink in those tiles.

We still have a few things on our kitchen list. See that terrible box light in the pictures above? Yeah. That's gotta go. We'd also like to hang a pendant over the kitchen window. We're looking at several different options and I'll be sure to keep you all posted. In the mean time, go check out what they have going on at Young House Love now. They're taking on a huge kitchen project and it's been fun to follow along.