Kitchen Revamp

When Levi finished his FTO (field training) and went to his solid 4 days on/3 days off schedule, he decided it was time to really start a house project. I'm thinking Great! Let's paint the laundry room, or a bathroom! Ooo or we could buy new shutters for the front of the house.... or change out some of the more hideous light fixtures...  Small projects. Easy stuff. Things that we could ease into, as neither of us have done any real home remodeling before. So where do we start?

Kitchen. Overhaul. O_o    So much for starting off small haha.

The before. Very basic. Very 90s. Very dirty dishes.

The cupboards were that lovely honey oak color that is found in almost every house built in the '90s... and Levi knew I would be thrilled to see it gone. However I nearly had an anxiety attack when I came home that night and my kitchen looked like this.

EEK!!

By that evening, the attached cupboards were sanded and Levi had one coat of gel stain on them all. He moves pretty dang fast!

While Levi continued staining, I started sanding the doors and drawer fronts as fast as I could. (I'd be ok with never seeing sand paper again in my life....) After 48 hours, we finally had all the staining done, new silver hinges and knobs screwed on, and the doors reattached. And it changed the feel of the whole room!

But then our blehh '90s counters stood out even more.... such a lovely off-white with blue and pink flecks. (Althought they went so great with the nasty floors.) So I looked at tons of DIY counter ideas on Pinterest and we fashioned our own method mostly based off this one. The short version: rolled on black paint, used a natural sponge to apply brown & beige paint, and then sealed it all with a clear coat epoxy. 

And they turned out like this! I was pretty dang impressed with Levi's painting skills.

(This is before the clear coat, which seemed to pull the colors
together even more.)

But we couldn't stop there! After finally agreeing on some aluminum back splash tiles from Amazon, replacing the worn out white outlets with black ones, buying a new light fixture for over the sink, and painting the walls "Quite Red", we were DONE!  I'm so impressed with Levi's handyman skills!!!

Next year: replacing all of the flooring in the house. All of it. But for now, it's time to move on to painting all the other rooms I think . . .