Update on Cabinets

Remember way back when I posted on refinishing my kitchen cabinets?! yes about a month ago now. Well.... I am sad to say I am still working on them. Gasp!! I know it is taking forever. I attribute it to needing to wait for things to dry and a baby boy that always wants his mommy. I am hoping to have everything done by thanksgiving, then I will have a kitchen to be thankful for. :)

Here is our bathroom that I did before the kitchen... It went a lot faster.

So I figured I could at least give an update for now and some tips for those of you that are trying out the same thing.

Tips:
1. Use a liquid sandpaper (Citristrip gel) on the drawers and doors. I found that it was a lot better at striping the wood than just sanding. I really want to get a good even smooth stain on the most noticeable parts of my cabinets. I did not use it on the frame as I didn't want to deal with the mess. Just did it on the large sides that were built in and sanded the rest.
2. Use the mineral wash recommend to get all the leftovers off the wood before and after sanding. It helped just to make sure the all the citristrip was off before the stain. It was also very helpful to get stain and topcoat off my hands.
3. Use larger tape then 1". I use 1" painters tape to tape off areas and I still got paint on the walls. It was hard to get my tools in the small areas.
4. Use a smooth sponge. Now there are others that say to use a sock but I found that a smooth sponge worked so much better to get a smooth coat on the wood. The sock wood leave marks where the toe stitch was and was hard to get an even coat.
5. Remove all hardware (cabinet hinge's) and appliances. I asked mt husband to do this for me and he said it would be fine and I may have gotten stain on stuff ...oppps I know you may not care about stain on your hinges but I kinda wish I had taken the time to do it cause it isn't very clean of a look.

Kitchen Cabinet DIY Part 1

I hate my cabinets!!!! Yes HATE is a strong word and I mean it.

Nope!! My kitchen is not clean..... sigh... 

Since we moved in I have not liked my cabinets but you don't buy a house for the cabinets (or at least I don't). After doing extensive research and BEGGING my hubby I tried out a gel stain on our bathroom upstairs.

I fell in love and so did Hubby :) He was the one to say I should start on the kitchen right away, thank goodness.

It took me a week in total with dry time and I had a beautiful bathroom ... well bathroom cabinets. I still am not a fan of the rest of it. We don't use it yet so it is low of the list of things to do.

I am sanding away at the kitchen cabinets right now. It is taking a good amount of time because I work full time and my baby just want me to be with him once I get home. I maybe get 2 done during his evening nap time.

The worst part in the sanding process so far is scrubbing down my above stove cabinet doors. The grease film on them had to be scrubbed off with Dawn soap and then scraped off, and finally sanded away.

The shelves that were not preserved by grease took no time at all. I am using a 120 to sand just the top layer to help the gel to go on better.

I of course am cleaning the cabinets first to make sure that any dirt is off.

Once everything is sanded it will be time to tape off the base/frame and then get to staining.
More to come...........

Closet Organizing

Living in a 2 story house has its pros and cons. One con is that you never (we never) want to walk upstairs to put our shoes or other things light that away.

I will admit that it is more my husband then me, hehe sorry love.

There are currently about 7 pairs of his shoes downstairs and 5 hats. Hubby is very particular about his hats and doesn't like me to hardly touch them (exaggeration a tad), so the hooks will mess the shape of his hats up ...apparently. I got an ok on the nicer hats being put upstairs while the everyday hats can go on the hooks.

With that being said I went to the store and got some $3 hooks and used an ikea hanging shelf we already had and solved my battle with the clutter downstairs. Shoes go in the shelves (along with stray socks sometimes) and hats are hung on the hooks.

Then There is a hook on the other side for my purse and the diaper bag to be hung. PERFECTION, even if the hook is not in a stud :) I did this project while hubby was hunting.

There are a few hangers for a stray shirt or jacket and a lot of other things in the back that we just wont look at for a while...... stop looking at it!

Make my life easier with keeping my house clean, at least when it comes to shoes, hats, etc. still working on everything else.

Bathroom Towel Hanger

I made this when we first bought our house and never was completely happy with it. It was one of those quick “Let’s get it up and move to the next project” things. Now with a little less things going on I just have to go back and update it. I made it buy first putting scrap pieces of wood that we had together and drawing a design on the top. I then carved out the image and weathered the wood using wood carving tools. This part was hard as I used scrap wood and some of the wood was very hard and difficult to carve into. The wood was free and on hand so it was worth the extra work. Then I gave it a light sand to smooth out any rough areas and using wood glue glued it all together. I first spray painted it with black spray paint then painted everything but the center image in blue.

 FAIL! I hated that coloring, so I added some white paint that we had and decided it would do. I hate it now and especially the fact that the white is glossy. It looks very keep and not rustic like my first idea was.

 

Redo Time! I started by sanding the entire thing and only leaving little parts of the paint behind. (During this process I broke my piece in half so it would be easier to sand.)

 

I then used a Jacobean stain to darken up the wood, applying it with a sponge and removing it with and old sock. After it had set for 6 to 8 hours I made sure that all the stain was off the wood with a Clorox wipe. The places where the paint was not sanding a lot didn't absorb the stain.

 

 

I don't have pictures of it on the wall yet as I need to put up the wainscoting first :)

Quick tip: Decorative Door Knobs

I bought so BEAUTIFUL Doorknobs for my kitchen pantry from Anthropologie and come to find out that the pre drilled hole that is in my pantry door is too big for the doorknob plate and the spindle it came with isnt long enough to make it to the other side of the door. My doors are in no way special, they are standard builder grade doors. I loved the knob so much that  Ijust couldnt bare to return it. After holding onto it for a good year I decided it was time to find a way to use it. I researched the parts of a doorknob so I first would know what the middle part was. It is a spindle!! Yay, I know something. I gave up on using it for my pantry and decided to use it as Dummy knob for our spare rooms closet doors.

I thought I would have to rig something up to make it stay but after searching on google I come to find that there is something called a dummy spindle. I got my dummy spindles on etsy for a total of $13.

All I needed to do was screw my spindles on and then screw my knob in place.

 

Notice how much smaller the knob rose (plate) is compared to our builders standard knobs.

 

I am in love with the look!

Now I have to start painting the room.