Cabinet Makeover for $14.00!!

We recently gave our kitchen cabinets a little makeover. We tossed around the idea of refinishing them (hesitantly, though...that's a lot of work!), but then hubby ran in to the right person and the right time while shopping at Home Depot, and he came home with two $7.00 cans of RustOleum Painter's Touch, a spray bottle of 409, and new sandpaper sheets for his Dremel multi-tool. We started removing the cabinet doors, very lightly sanding them off (not even to take the previous finish off, but just to smooth them out a bit...some barely got sanded at all). Then I wiped them all clean with the 409. Then we went to painting!!! It only took us about a day, total, to complete the entire kitchen with two coats of paint. For $14.00 and 24 hours, I have never been so in love with a DIY project in my life!!! They don't even look "painted"...trust me, that is one look I'd like to avoid. Instead, the wood grains come through the pain very nicely and so it actually appears to be a dark stain rather than paint.

Before:

...and AFTER!!

It has now been two months since we completed the project, and I am still thrilled with the results. We haven't had any issues with the paint, and they look like they were actually completely refinished. I've wiped the doors off numerous times with a very wet rag and it dries perfectly fine (doesn't discolor it or leave "spots" like I would have expected from paint). We've had little people drive things into the cabinets, climb up the drawers, and just treat them like little people do, and there are no chips or scrapes. It's all turned out very well!! And all thanks to these little guys...


Our next project is redoing the countertops with Countertop Paint. Again, we tossed around a lot of ideas on how to redo them, and had assumed we'd just tile them, but we are going to give the paint a shot first and see how we like the look!