Kitchen Cabinets

Amy has wanted a bench seat in our kitchen since we moved into this house. I was worried it just wouldn't work with the layout of our kitchen when one day, I thought out loud, "maybe we could build some cabinets on both sides of this window and put a bench seat in between." Amy loved the idea and I was on the hook! Me and my big mouth!

Here is our before picture. The cabinets and bench seat were destined for the back wall.

Home Depot had a great sale on in-stock cabinets the weeks following the 4th of July so we bought a bunch of unfinished ones. I would have loved to have gotten finished, but they would not work out for a variety of reasons.

After purchasing the cabinets, I was really on the hook.

I turned the third stall of our garage into a painting room and borrowed the father in-laws air compressor and spray gun.

Here are the cabinet doors ready for paint. To get to this point, I needed to sand each with 100 grit paper, clean, sand again with 220 grit paper, clean with a tack cloth, and move into my paint room.

It was a ton of fun painting in my plastic enclosed room. It was over a hundred outside, the room was filled with a cloud of paint fumes, and I had a mask and goggles on. I'm lucky I didn't pass out!

After a quick primer, sand, clean, primer, sand, clean, paint, sand, clean, paint, sand, clean, paint sand, clean, polycrylic (clear plastic finish), sand, clean, polycrylic, sand, clean, polycrlic, sand, clean I was done. Yup eight coats! Oh, actually, I needed to perform all those steps on both sides. This was way more work than I expected. With required paint dry time, this took a long time and was the most work.

I had to repeat the sanding process for the cabinet bodies as well. Thankfully, the hand sander worked better on the flat cabinet bodies.

While I was painting the cabinet doors outside, I started the build inside. One of my first steps was to cut the edge pieces so they could fit tight up against some of the window trim.

After getting a level base on each side, the cabinets went up fairly quickly. I used my clamps to get the cabinets as flush as possible. The problem was these cabinets were not designed to stack but instead should fit side by side. There were some gaps and uneven areas that were not noticeable until they were put together. I filled all of gaps with wood filler to make it all look nice.

 With the cabinets starting to go up, I turned my attention to the bench seat base.

 The kids thought the base was really cool.

 Here is a picture of the finished build, minus trim.

 The crown molding is now up and I was getting ready to paint.

 Just like the cabinet doors, eight coats were needed for everything inside.

 Here is the trim and baseboards I installed.

And after a ton of work, here is the finished project. We actually had to cut and modify the curtains so they fit well enough without hindering the cabinet doors.

 A view of the other side.

This project took a lot longer than I expected, but it was well worth it. I made a few mistakes along the way but was able to fix or work through all of them. I think it turned out nicely. We will love all the extra space in the kitchen. Amy is already looking around the house to find the next place for me to build a cabinet wall!