Kitchen Blues Remodeling

During the summer is when I do those special projects around the house. The wife is out of the country with her two kids, the dog is in the kennel, and I'm all by myself. Last year I managed to move from the condo in Newhall to the four bedroom house in Castaic. This year it was time to get rid of the awful blue color in the kitchen. The photos on the left and right show the kitchen as of April 17, 2006. I had just decided to work on the kitchen and I was under the impression that I could do it all myself. Sand down the doors, sand the cabinet, apply the stain, apply the lacquor, put the hinges and handles back on and voila, I'll be done. Wasn't that easy.

May 9th, 2006. Almost a month into the project and you can see almost all the doors are off and sanded. I have a pile of doors sitting in the dining area all sorted in order and sanded. Right after this is where I first tried to sand one of the cabinets. Previously all my sanding was done outside. I would remove the door, remove the hardware, take it outside and sand it. Now for the first time I tried it indoors. Big mess. I was cleaning up for days. I found sawdust in the corner of the upstairs bedroom. That's how far it got. That's when I said "Ok, time to get a professional."

We went to home Depot and had them give us an estimate for pulling the cabinets out and putting new ones in. The estimate came out to $12K. I had another guy come in to give me an estimate on refacing the cabinets. Still too much. But he said something that did catch my ear. He said all the cabinets were solid oak. There was no reason I couldn't just get a professional to sand it and stain it. By August 1st I found someone that was going to tear out the moulding, bring in a painting company for the sanding and staining, and would put new moulding in and stain it. First they had to cover up all the stuff that wasn't to be stained

August 2nd. This is what it looked like after all the sanding. It only took them one day where it would have taken me ages to get all those cabinets sanded.

August 9th. Here it is after the staining. All the doors are back on and the pretty new hardware is all attached. Notice the walls are still blue.

The walls are all done. Doesn't it look much brighter? I even managed to get the guy to put three halogen lights into the cabinet for the bar area.