Rude Mechanicals Press Blog

Colin asked me to comment on painting my kitchen cabinets. I started to simply respond, but I figured why not just post it (and I’m surprised I haven’t already written about it!).

So: The why, how and what of my kitchen cabinet finishes:

I built the cabinets intending to paint them. I simply prefer the more casual look of painted kitchens to clear-finished wood, at least in a “workingman’s Victorian.” Were this an Arts & Crafts home (or a fancier, high-style place), I’d likely have chosen oak or another appropriate hardwood.

I used 3/4″ maple plywood that was factory-finished on one side – that became the interior cabinet surfaces – with a paint-grade reverse. The boxes are simply rabbeted and screwed. All the plywood shelves (which are adjustable, of course) are edged with a 1″ x 1″ strip of hard maple. That edging is finished with Formby’s Tung Oil Finish (low gloss, 3 coats), which is the same finish I used on the beech countertops (7 coats for those…or maybe it was 8).

After filling the screw holes with Durham’s Rock-Hard Water Putty and sanding those areas smooth and flush, I painted the exteriors using a brush for the edges at the wall and a smooth roller on most of the surfaces. Sure, it would have been easier to paint them before installation…but I was too eager to get them hung and build/apply the poplar face frames so I could get started on the door and drawers. It also would have been faster to spray them (before installation), but I don’t have paint-spraying equipment – plus the late autumn/early winter weather precluding setting up for that in the backyard (also known as my spray booth).

With the cabinets installed and painted, I hung and fit all the doors, then removed them and painted them with brushes and rollers. The drawer fronts were painted in place; I just had to remember to not shut them as the paint dried. (That was difficult; there is little that bugs me more about furniture than doors and drawers not in their proper positions.)

For the paint, I decided on the same as is on my interior trim work – Valspar Reserve (semi-gloss) in…I have no idea what color – some sort of slightly antique white. It is theoretically “one coat, stain-blocking Paint + Primer” that holds up to scrubbing/washing (which it really does!), has “super adhesion,” “maximum hiding, anti-fade formula” and is “mildew-resistant.” Also, it doesn’t smell bad during application, which is a plus.

It is not, however, one coat on a fresh surface (nor over existing paint on walls, for that matter). I applied two coats on the plywood, and three coats on the face frames and doors/drawers. Had I not been wanting to match the trim, I’d have probably gone with Valspar’s “Chalky Finish” paint, because I like that dead-flat, milk-paint vintage look.

I know a lot of folks who swear by Benjamin Moore’s Aura paint for interior work, but it costs about one-third more than the Valspar Reserve, and I’ve found it more difficult to apply, and with no better coverage – though I can’t comment on long-term durability/fading differences. I used Aura in my dining room, but only 4 years or so ago. The yellow in my kitchen is Valspar flat, and it was painted at about the same time. Neither has faded, and both have been scrubbed in areas a few times, with no adverse effects.

The “Mission Bin Pulls” with a brushed-nickel finish are from Rejuvenation, which also offers an amazing array of very well-made period reproduction lighting. I love those bin pulls – I used them on the cherry coffee table and bookcase I built for the living room. But I will say I liked the company a lot more when it was privately owned (it was bought in 2011 by Williams-Sonoma). I’ve been less-than-impressed with the customer service in recent years – but their product is good enough that I suffer it.

The “Classic Kitchen Knobs” and “Non-Mortised Hinges” (I think of it as “efficient” rather than “lazy” in this application) are from the family-owned company Horton Brasses. I quite like the company’s cabinet hardware – it’s what I and others use for a lot of the furniture pieces you see in Popular Woodworking Magazine, and their customer service is unfailingly friendly and fast. Heck – the owner himself (Orion Henderson) often gets back to you. You really can’t ask for more!

If my luck improves a little bit and I’m able to get the sewer crap sorted in a timely and affordable manner, my mom won’t get to see the finished kitchen project (she lives 600 miles away and gets to Cincinnati only once or twice a year). My fervent hope is that new owners are enjoying it and the rest of the home by her next visit to town.

So I shot this iPhone video for her. The production quality is not the best, but I have some minor plumbing repairs and plaster patching to which I must attend. No time to haul out the “real” camera or for fancy editing. If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ve already seen everything here in still-image bits and pieces.  (Just trying to save 2 minutes and 4 seconds of your time.)

Getting this curved-at-the bottom threshold to fit (well enough) was – and I’m not kidding – the most difficult thing in the entire project.

It’s been 432 days since I eased into rehabbing my kitchen by gingerly and carefully removing one of the paint-over-contact paper-over-MDF big-box cabinets that used to grace the space.

2013 Realtor’s photo, shot with a wide-angle lens…it is not as big as it looks. And I’m pretty sure it was retouched.

I admit, the “before” shot from when I had it on the market in 2013 doesn’t look that heinous. I’ve sure seen a heck of a lot worse. (It was worse when I moved in – I painted over the “wood” look and changed out the grotty “brass” hardware.)

What you can’t really see, however, are the crooked doors, cracked tile, dented and rust-spotted sink, sway-backed peeling laminate counters, black rubber mop board…

Plus, the squat stock cabinets were too short for the space (and didn’t align to one another – ACK!), and inside, the shelves were all bubbly with lifting paint – MDF zits, if you will. (They were like that when I bought the place, though I likely added to the problem).

After looking at hundreds of kitchen pictures online, I stole ideas and looks, then drew a SketchUp model of what I’d decided on. I took that and a materials list to a couple of kitchen rehab pros, and was quoted $28,000 and $28,700.

Um, no. I work in publishing.

After. No wide-angle lens, no retouching.

S0 432 days and about $4,000 later (I’m not counting my time, obviously, nor the cost of the many expensive tools, etc. I used in the process) I have a new kitchen. And I am tired. But I am done.

At least $150 of that $4,000? Ibuprofen and a tetanus shot. (Broken and rusty floor underlayment staples are minions of the devil.)

I now understand those professional quotes. In retrospect, they seem perfectly reasonable. Plus I’m guessing it wouldn’t have taken a professional kitchen remodeler more than a year to get done. Still, I (mostly) had fun, and I learned a great deal.

The finished kitchen is pretty close to what I envisioned. I ended up not taking cabinets all the way up to the ceiling as I’d initially planned, yet there’s about 40 percent more storage than before. And I didn’t do a full tile backsplash behind the sink; the century-old plaster walls are simply too out of flat. (Plus, because I decided to eschew cabinets over the sink, I couldn’t find a stopping point for tile.)

So now that I’ve created almost exactly what I wanted and am – not gonna lie – proud of it, it’s time to sell and buy a new old house. (I should seek mental help.)

My plan is to buy another inexpensive house with good bones (but poor stewardship and curious design decisions) and fix it up. Again. (I sure wish I’d taken before and after pictures of the other five rooms, two baths and concrete back yard I’ve torn out and rehabbed over the last 13 years here. The kelly-green carpet in three rooms and the manila and brown-tiled 70s bath were quite a sight.)

At 46, I think I have one more old house fix-up in me. And because I now have more skill (and tools) than I did 13 years ago, perhaps the next one will take only five years to get done.

But at the moment, as long as it has space for a woodshop, “move-in ready” is looking mighty fine.

The last piece to build for the kitchen is a counter-height something or other to go to the left of the stove. But there are a few challenges (aren’t there always) and design considerations.

On the other end of the same run, I simply notched the counter for the door trim, and fit the cabinet frame flush with the trim. No window sill to get in the way.

The curve is the most noticeable and vexing thing; it starts about 19″ to the left of the stove, and continues around to about 4″ behind the window trim. And that window trim? It encroaches on about 3″ of the counter depth – not to mention the sill juts out a couple inches.

While I suppose I could build a base cabinet that fits the curve, I simply don’t want to. A square one shallow enough to avoid dealing with the curve wouldn’t offer enough storage to be worth the trouble (plus it would annoy me to know there’s wasted space behind). And anyway, I don’t think it would look good to have a cabinet bumping into the window (the sill in particular would be a problem).

Besides – I spent a fair amount of time and effort kerfing that baseboard to conform to the curve. I’m not about to cover it up. (Yeah, yeah – I still need to do the curved shoe moulding…seriously considering a flexible product for that.)

Also, I want a covered place (that is, not in a footpath) to stash the cats’ food bowls and dry-food container, with enough room for them to comfortably eat (and enough room for a decent-sized dog to get under, in case potential new owners prefer canines).

So something more in a table vein seems in order. But I wouldn’t like how a leg at the front-left corner would visually compete with the window trim and baseboard.

So I played around in SketchUp and came up with the following, which progress from “Oh HELL no” to “Hell no” to “Eh, maybe” to “Yeah, I think so.” I’m still waiting for “Heck yeah!” to strike. (And there’s the slim chance that I might punt – but probably not.)

I already have the countertop (same Ikea Numerär) I used for the rest, and the legs are spaced not only to be visually appealing (to me, anyway), but to accommodate a towel rail. I think that would look more elegant than my current solution of hanging towels from the stove and/or dishwasher handle.

It’s functional, I suppose (and matches the rest of the cabinets, of course), but there is ample cabinet space already – about 40 percent more than what I tore out. Also, to my mind it implies I couldn’t build a properly sized space-filling cabinet, and therefore makes everything look like stock cabinets from the big-box…which is what I tore out because they didn’t fit and were clearly cheap stock cabinets from a big-box rather than pieces custom-made to fit the space. (It’s possible I’m overthinking things.)

This is too blocky and too basic. The straight legs look too heavy, though the straight lines would match the square cabinets. Really what it comes down to is I just don’t like it.

The tapered legs here (I’d probably taper them on two sides rather than on only the one side drawn) lighten things up a bit and make it look more design-y (technical term). But it feels like a wasted opportunity to introduce another storage option to the space as whole. And only an Irish wolfhound needs that much height to fit under (and since an Irish wolfhound would not fit in this house at all…)

This one, I’m almost sold on. The taper starts below the slat shelf, a shelf that seems like a good place to store a bag of potatoes or onions, or to simply display a nice bowl. The 19″ clearance under it to the floor is plenty for my cats (and their food-storage bin) and for a medium-sized dog. But I’m not sure about, say, a Labrador retriever.

I suppose the third iteration could work, but I feel as if I’d have to add a drawer, so that it can masquerade as a desk/worktable (and then where would the towels go?). But a drawer means more work than simply grabbing the Domino to make a simple, solid base (don’t hate – it’s a kitchen counter, not an heirloom build; hand-cut tenons need not apply).