The Cabinet Project

So I decided to take it upon myself to refinish my cabinets. I thought I had it in me… I still sort of do. I started here:

Stripping all the varnish off on a Saturday with Lauren’s help:

That took much longer than I thought and it was cold. Only 50 degrees. My hands were numb or so I thought.

Then there were days and nights of sanding (again Lauren helped!):

And then there was the prestaining to help the stain soak in evenly later:

And then first coat of real stain:

And progress

And then things went bad by coat 3:

All the areas where the old orange-ish stain wouldn’t come out of the wood, now shows through the dark stain. It wouldn’t let anymore stain soak into it by this point and started getting blotchy. I never did do the fronts of the cabinets with a 3rd coat after I saw the results of the backs of the cabinets.

So now I’m starting over, sanding to prepare for PAINT!:

I went to Sherwin Williams and picked up a primer/sealer to paint over the stain with and a nice dark mahogany paint. Hopefully it will be complete in 2 more weeks… we will see.

Remodeling… in a crappy economy

A couple weeks ago we found that our shower in the master bath was leaking into the wall. Since we can’t figure out where the leak is coming from, the wall needs to be taken down to the studs. So all the tile around the shower stall is gonna be taken off the wall. I figured if the wall is gonna be taken apart and the tile all pulled off, instead of paying someone to put all the crappy white tile back on the wall, why not get an estimate for new tile in the entire shower. But the shower connects to the tub next to it… so why not price that out too. And then of course the only place left where there’s white tile is the counter… so yea… i guess price that out too! They say (HGTV) that any money you put into a master bath you will get back double for when you sell the home. We could use that Maybe it will make our house worth as much as we owe on it and we can get a refinance without the brute force of a lawyer!

We’re pricing out granite and marble slabs for the counter and bath top and then travertine tile for the shower and around the bathtub. The slabs will be way easier to clean. I think we need to get undermount sinks and then we’ll try to sell our current sinks. I hope they can put a slab over our tub, no way we’re getting a new tub (do they even make undermount jacuzzi tubs?). We’re saving the glass shower surround too… found out a new one is like $1200! Yikes!

So hard to believe we’re doing this, but pay minimum $1500 to a plumber and contractor to fix this just seems like a wasted investment.