Kitchen Makeovers: Before and After
Kitchen makeovers, updates, renovations, remodels …
Replacement Cabinet Doors
Remodeling your kitchen to make it more modern or to clean up any old or damaged fixtures can add both financial and aesthetic value to your home.
Kitchen cabinets are often one of the first fixtures to require attention, however replacing the entire cabinet unit can be very costly and time consuming. An alternative to complete cabinet replacement is to simply install replacement cabinet doors to your existing cabinets.
Replacement cabinet doors can be custom made to fit your cabinets and your desired look. Cheaper replacement cabinet doors are often made from laminate, which is often a fiberboard material covered in a durable and long lasting plastic coating. You can also buy unfinished cabinet doors that are ready for your primer and paint. Unfinished cabinet doors are often fiberboard or wood that have no existing coats of paint, varnish, or sealer on them so that they accept paint well.
Replacement cabinet doors are available online from wholesalers or from local carpenters. You can even visit large commercial chain hardware stores to order cabinets, although these locations often charge more for the product. Shopping around for the best price can really pay off!
Also wise is the decision to consider a variety of finishes (i.e. paint, stains, glazes, etc.) for the one that will last the longest and look the best in your existing kitchen decor. Finally, additions such as unique hinges can really bring an interesting look to your cabinets. Search online or in the hardware store for these, or be adventurous and look at junk yards or resale shops for antique pieces.
No matter what you decide, though, remodeling your cabinets is certainly a wise-investment in your home for both equity and look.
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Kitchen Before and After pics from petit hiboux
I rather like the buttery yellow cabinet color myself, but petit hiboux is right that color just doesn’t go with the newer bright colors in the other rooms.
In the after shot – the cabinets have been painted white, the copper-colored hinges have been stripped back to the underlying pewter color, and the walls are bright blue. All good, but now the harvest gold fridge sticks out like a sore thumb and it’s hard to know what you could do with the spotty tile. Tile over it would probably be the best bet, if it’s solidly attached to the wall.
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Kitchen Cabinet Makeover examples
I’ve been wandering through the many kitchen makeover videos online, looking at what other people have done to their existing kitchen cabinets, since I don’t plan on ripping my perfectly serviceable (if ugly) cabinets out.
The kitchen cabinets in this video are very similar to mine – face frames with flat slab doors. These people painted the frames black, then glued pale birch veneer onto the door fronts and varnished. Looks great, though I would probably go with a light color for the frames instead of black. They also did a lot of other work but left some old countertops in place. Given that counters are one of the simplest things to change, that seems a bit odd, but maybe they have Stage II in mind!
Next, a low budget makeover on a kitchen that was really pretty good to start with. They changed the wall color from dark green to a light color, changed the faucet and the light fixtures, and the cabinet pulls, and bingo – what a difference!
Finally… well, to me, this is a “what not to do” makeover. Bright red floor, bright red door centers on white cabinets, bright red tabletop, and far, far too much fruity wallpaper. The final straw is the ugliest chandelier in the world over the sink. I wonder how long the homeowners kept it like this?
I’ll just have to remember to take video of mine when the time comes, eh. Still working on the bathroom right now though, sanding drywall mud <cough>.
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My kitchen: the Before pictures
Here are the pictures of my kitchen in its “before” state.
First, here’s how it looked when I viewed the house before buying. There’s a black dishwasher in place, the range is sitting properly between base cabinets, it’s ugly (and dirty, though you can’t see that) but there’s a 6ft clear counter run and plenty of storage. The fridge is only a few years old.
Here’s how it looked as I was moving in. The dishwasher has vanished and the hole is boarded up.
The range has been pulled out into the middle of the floor and it won’t go back between the cabinets. Between my 6′ 3″ friend and I, we tried real hard, but it wouldn’t go. There was a piece missing off the end of the (almost new) countertop beside it, too. I later found out that an electrician who had been called in to fix the supply wiring to the range while the house was up for sale, had had to cut the counter top in order to get the range out, it was glued in so thoroughly by grease and food-goo. The reason we couldn’t get it to go back in was that the second oven, the one at the top, wouldn’t fit between the upper cabinets (which had been cut years before to get it in, but not with enough clearance. Or maybe they were built around it originally and were cut to get it out. Whatever. There was no bottom shelf to the cabinet over the range.)
You can see from this that the kitchen is quite long – 16 feet. It’s a pity that the range and sink are, to my mind, the wrong way round: I want to move from prep at the sink, to cooking at the range, to serving into the dining room, all in the same direction. Not finish cooking at the far end near the back door!
Here’s the old range in all its glory. It had originally been harvest gold, but then painted white with flat latex paint, and the white was peeling off. It actually functioned quite well (I liked the eye-level oven), and it even came with all the parts to a rotisserie attachment, but it had to go. Off to a friend’s cabin it went.
I replaced it with a lightly used Kenmore self-cleaning convection range. I don’t mind the curly-wurly burners, they work just fine (and I hate the way things get baked on those smooth ceramic range tops) and I love the convection oven. AND it fits all the way back against the wall between the cabinets!
Next up: the weird lacy cabinet handles and the carpeted toekick!
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