Kitchen Renovation - Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformation, Flooring, Moulding
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Our family has been in our home for more than six years and outside of new light fixtures, some appliances, and paint, our kitchen had remained frozen in time. Each and every time moving in and out of our kitchen and dining area was a little reminder of what was considered to be design in the early 90’s. Needlesstosay, we’ve had a desire to remodel our kitchen for a long time.
Remodeling a kitchen can be a wildly costly endeavor that always has the possibility of going far beyond the original budget as nearly any home project can. We debated for a good few years as to how to go about remodeling our kitchen. Below, we’re going to tell our story and provide in-depth details into the process. There are so many terrific kitchen remodeling reviews, ideas, and stories on the Internet, so we hope that this will help add to the knowledge database out there! One thing that we found when researching our project was that there were great idea and reviews, but many times product specifics from the particular name of a given item to the pricing was omitted. It’s our hope to give you a lot of details that will help answer those questions.
While doing our research, we looked at many cabinet options from gutting our current kitchen and installing an Ikea kitchen (when they run their semi-annual 20% off sale) to having our current cabinets painted and/or refaced.
Our initial cost options looked roughly like this:
- New Ikea Kitchen Cabinets and Hardware $8500
- Custom Cabinet Refacing and Painting $5000
- Simple Cabinet Repainting $1000-$2000
There was a fourth option.
Several months prior, we found a Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformation kit suitable for our bathroom in the Oops! paint section at Home Depot. The Oops! paint offers steep discounts over regular pricing as they are leftovers from already mixed product. Some customers simply don’t like the way a color has turned out compared to the color sample chips and it seems like the home improvement stores also gather all of the paint that people simply fail to pick back up and purchase. The discounted Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformation was $37.50.
My wife said that we could try the product out in our master bathroom and see if would then become even remotely possible to use in our kitchen. Our master bathroom cabinets matched our kitchen with the same light wood style of the early 90s. The color of the cabinet kit that we used is called Espresso. (The whole transformation process will be detailed as we move into the kitchen remodel.)
The redo of the bathroom cabinets were an unmitigated success and it planted the seed that the kitchen cabinets could be redone with the product.
We kept debating the options and finally decided firm up a plan. The directive was clear: Whatever we do, it better look like a professional did it. There are no second chances. As Mike Holmes says, make it right. That was the mantra for the entire project.
This became our checklist of items to do:
- Redo the kitchen cabinets with Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformations
- Change outer hinges to inner European style hinges (Ahhh…. See below)
- Replace cabinet handle hardware
- Remove and redo all kitchen moulding - Chair, floor, and shoe
- Replace kitchen lighting
- Repaint kitchen
- Remove outdated counters with granite
- Add tile backsplash
- Remove and replace flooring
- Replace current switches and outlets along with switchplates and outlet covers
- New faucet and redo plumbing
The basic premise became that outside of the cabinets, everything was to be gutted. When you’re tackling a project of this size, it’s always good to expect the unexpected and to have budgetary flexibility. To be realistic, budget up to an additional 25% of your original estimate just to be safe. In many cases, you won’t need that much more, but in the cases that you do, then you won’t have to scratch and claw for the difference.
We came in in our original targeted range, but there are many reasons for that. My workshop has many tools from table saws to mitre saws, levels, you name it. If this is one of your first projects and you don’t have many tools, it will add substantially to your budget from the start. Since we have so many areas to cover, the first area to cover will be the tools that were needed with their approximate cost. Later on, the tools will be mentioned in each area that we remodeled.
Major Tools
Skil Compound Mitre Saw 3316 $225
Skil Table Saw 3310 $130
Skil Drill Press $125
Dremex SawMax $95
PorterCable Brad Nailer BN200B $120
Air Compressor $65
Hitachi 18 Volt Drill $129
Misc. Tools
Small Level $6
Stanley Tape Measure $10
Chissel $10
Package of Brad Nails $12
Misc. Drill Bits $35
Caulk $30
Caulk Gun
Wall Spackle $20
Hammer $10
Misc. Phillips and Flat Head Screwdrivers $18
Flooring Install Tools Kit (30 pieces w/blocks) $15
There are more odds and ends tools that will be referenced throughout, but this covers the most heavily used items.
Phase One: Remodeling our Cabinets
Will be posted on June 8, 2015 along with images.