The Final Countdown...

A few weeks ago, Kim came home and proposed having our kitchen cabinets re-finished. A client of his (a painter) had been having some financial difficulties and Kim had managed to get his account cleared of some past due money. So, the guy feels indebted to Kim for the help and suggests that since his work is so slow right now, he could do us a favor in return. He came over about 3 weeks ago and looked over the cabinets and tells me that in a week I will have a whole new (looking) kitchen. All we had to do was supply the $$ for the supplies and he would do the labor for free. Yippee!! So, the next day, I set out and cleared the countertops and spent the better part of a day cleaning the faces of the cabinets for sanding. (He was going to do all the actual staining, we had to do quite a bit of prep work beforehand.) We had the kids sanding and washing and cleaning and then a day or so later, he came and set to work. The first few coats of stain I was not happy with. The cabinets were a dated oak color and the varnish was actually coming off in quite a few spots. They always looked dirty to me and no matter how much I cleaned them, they never looked nice. So, we wanted to go darker. A little more reddish-brown color. It took several attempts and much more than a week to get it right. But, yesterday, we hung the final product and added all the new hardware. It does need to have some final touch-ups done, but all in all I am very pleased at how they look. Check out the before and after pictures...my camera doesn't quite do it justice, but I am very happy with how they turned out. And, even more happy that it is almost done!

BEFORE

AFTER