So if you can remember back a few months, I came here seeking advice on my cabinets. I was pretty sure I was going to have them refinished, but my contractor convinced me that a melamine paint, white, would look really good. He’s never steered me wrong, and I remembered some advice from posters here that matched his advice. They turned out REALLY nicely. Here are some before and afters…
Oh, and I’ll have some more before and after pictures of my entire kitchen as a finished product tommorow morning. I just have to finish painting the walls.
I’ll bet it really brightens up the room. Still, if I may comment the skirt above the window sort of dates the cabinets. I wonder if there’s anything you can do with that.
Seriously though, I dunno. I should have thought about that before they got painted though. I would have just replaced it with a plain-jane flat piece of wood.
But it will do for now, seeing as how the only reason i’m even doing this is for the flip. Getting closer to being able to sell!
The cabinets look great and very modern. I tend to agree about the wavy skirt thing - I had something like that in a house I bought in the late 80s.
Did you just tile over the stuff in the last photos? What sort of prep did you do?
I’m dealing with the same sort of thing after taking out some of that decorative fake brick stuff. The surface that is left is very rough and some of that brick took huge chunks of the underneath with when it came off.
Hehe. Smashing things is fun. It looks exceptionally better than it did. Pat yourself on the back. I’m not sure what I would do with the skirt. Since you’re selling, I’d probably not put much more work into it getting rid of it and I don’t know what effect smashing it up would have on the remaining structure around the window. Is it just decorative or structural somehow? I couldn’t answer that.
But, if you could lose the cabinet structure above the window with little work and no ill effects, it might open it up even more.
ETA: Or maybe even just set it back closer to the window to act as a valance type thing to hide the curtain fixture.
Great job! Your work really brought your kitchen up to speed!
One word of advice about showing your house (IAMARealtor, but I do watch plenty of television…) - either get rid of that microwave when you’re showing, or get a cart for that corner to keep it on, off the counter. You’ve got more small kitchen appliances than many people do, and people won’t get a clear idea of counter space when viewing your kitchen if you’ve got so many appliances and a microwave that is clearly too big for the space.
I like the brown color you chose for the wall BTW. Very modern!
Yeah, I agree with ZipperJJ. You’ll want to get rid of everything but the toaster oven (and probably that, too), so it looks like you have counter space. I can tell you the lack of counter space is a negative. There used to be a show on HGTV (I don’t have cable) about staging your house for sale. So few people do that, but I think it really makes a difference. It sure did when we found our rental, which we looked at while the previous tenants were still living here. They had decent furniture and kept things pretty clean and uncluttered; it really made the space looking inviting and pleasant. It looks like hell now, of course, but that’s beside the point. I still love this place, but it was even cooler with someone else’s furniture.
A quick fix for rough walls you want to look smooth and flat - and are as lazy as I:
Masonite ™ - 1/8", textured on one side (or both, for that matter).
Glue masonite ™ to beat-up wall, textured/rough side out.
Smear mud (“taping compound”) over the texture - the texture holds it quite well.
Result: smooth surface indistinguishable from real plaster. Did this in the (built 1919) kitchen in 1985 - still looks good.
Am tempted to try this with 1/16" luan plywood - it will not hide the lumps as well as the masonite ™, but, being thinner, minimizes the effect on any trim (which appears 1/8" thinner after the treatment, of course)
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