kitchen cabinets: phase one

We've been dying to redo our kitchen since day one of our house. We've always loved white cabinets and really wanted to install them when we chose everything at the design studio, but the ones we loved were not in our budget. We would have had to give up several other upgrades in place of them. Knowing we could either replace or paint them down the road we went with the dark espresso and also skipped the hardware.

Now, just shy of three years since moving in, we are finally painting them! My original goal was to have them done by Halloween, but life happened. My next goal is Thanksgiving, which is next week and my in-laws are coming to visit this weekend. Crazy? Of course, but that's just how we roll! 

Ah! Look how little our baby was then!

Our overall vision is to paint all the cabinets while adding character detail, add open shelves on our huge blank wall, replace the stove top/oven combo and install new countertops + backsplash. To make things a little bit easier, Mike and I have decided to do this this kitchen renovation in phases. How many phases??? We're not exactly sure yet, but at least three as it will depend how we decide to budget each phase and how quickly we want to move through it.

We're starting by just focusing on the upper cabinets. We know for sure we want those to be white, and we think we've settled on painting the lowers a dark gray, but we won't fully commit to that until the uppers are done and we can see how much more light they bring into the space. If we need even more light, then we'll paint the lowers white as well. I know that's a mouthful and you're probably thinking I'm such a scatter brain for not deciding, but I'm a girl and I tend to change my mind. A lot. I'd much rather go in phases and get a feel as we move through this process instead of rushing and not loving the final product.

To begin phase one we started by removing the cabinet doors, sanding everything down and priming using our favorite primer, Kilz. We removed the overhead microwave because it was driving us nuts. It takes up so much headroom over the stove and we wanted it gone. We're also pulling the double cabinet out over the refrigerator. We want it to look built in and after seeing this tutorial from Young House Love we knew we could easily do it ourselves and still use the existing cabinet. (Win!!) After we reset our cabinets, we'll be adding trim to the top and bottom of the cabinets for a finished look. We are definitely on our way and can't wait for this phase of our little renovation to be done! We hope you visit us again to see our progress! 

Happy Friday Eve

xo