IC Kitchen Remodel Begins: New Upper Doors

Hello friends.  Recently I began working on my remodeling my kitchen.  I am not sure why, after two years of living in this house, did I wait so long to work on my kitchen.  It completely has transformed my main floor.  I guess because it was functional, although ugly, was probably why I waited.  There were other things in my house that needed more function and beauty first.  So here are some pictures of where my kitchen began.  The only thing I have done to it besides add new flooring was to knock out the desk area and add an awesome IKEA Sektion pantry. That simple upgrade added so much more organization and storage to my kitchen.

Well I would love to reconfigure my kitchen but it isn’t realistic for us to spend that kind of money.  If this was our forever house I would consider it, but my husband and my track record for staying in one place isn’t stellar.  I knew some paint, updated light fixtures, new countertops and a tricked out peninsula would do wonders for the look and resale value down the road.

One of the simple upgrades I did before I began painting the cabinets was to replace the upper cabinet doors.  The cabinets themselves were in great condition but the arch in the doors and the honey oak stain took them back to circa 1985.  I had a friend who recommended Kendor Wood out of Kentucky to replace the doors.  I will say they are super old school because they mostly just work with contractors and not customers (they do everything via email) but they did everything I asked them to do and the price per door was way cheaper than anything I found.  I paid $329.30 out of the door for the 10 doors with shipping (shipping was $68.84 of that cost).  I got a paint grade flat panel shaker style door.  Make sure you measure twice before you send over your measurements. if you measure wrong you have to repay to have another one made. I was 100% satisfied with Kendor Wood and would use them again and recommend them. 

My amazing father-in-love came to visit me from Atlanta and since he is awesome at woodworking, and much more precise than I am, I asked him if he would drill out the holes for the hinges.

He banged it out so much quicker than I would have, and of course, they are perfect.  He used the old doors as a template for where to drill and we also reused the hinges.

He measured twice so he had perfect placement.

He used a carpenter square to transfer the measurements onto the door frame.

 

Then he used a nail to knock a hole into the middle of where the hinge placement should go.  That allowed him to line up the euro hinge bit into the correct place.

Then he used my drill press with the euro hinge bit in place and set the depth.  He practiced on some scrap wood first to make sure he got the correct depth.  Then he drilled out all the holes for me.  You could do this with a drill rather than a drill press but be ever so careful to drill perfectly upright.

See how the little hole on the bit drills directly into the nail hole he made in the previous steps?

Using the carpenter square again he made sure the hinge was straight and used his trust nail to “pre drill” the placement of the screws.  After that, he screwed the hinges in place and hung up the doors.

 

You can see the difference the updated doors made in the overall look of the cabinets. 

Okay next up is painting!  I decided to go with white uppers (OC-17 White Dove) and a medium tone gray (Cinder AF-705) by Benjamin Moore.  I will share with you all of my tips for painting your cabinets in my next post.