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CartHere’s How to Refresh Your Kitchen
Renovating your kitchen can cost a lot, and the cooking downtime is a pretty big disruption to family life. A kitchen refresh is much simpler, but the result can still be a huge aesthetic improvement. Unlike a full-on reno, a refresh doesn’t involve removing walls or reconfiguring the space. The changes are mostly cosmetic: they can be basic and simple, or encompass nearly every element in the kitchen. Follow DIY expert Noelle McCarney’s easy steps to get inspired for your own kitchen refresh.
Our Kitchen Chronicles
When we began restoring our 1980’s fixer-upper bungalow, one room that was constantly put on the back burner was the kitchen. We were afraid of the potential cost, and of a long-drawn-out renovation. Then we hit on the idea of a kitchen refresh vs. renovation. The result was a big transformation on a small budget. Instead of replacing all of our cabinets, we opted to swap in new hardware and repaint them with our home’s signature BeautiTone paint in the colour Whipped. We did knock out one row of upper cabinets, but we replaced them with a shiplap feature wall and open shelving. This required some planning, and our local Home Hardware was there every step of the way with great tips and product advice.
Here’s What You’ll Need to Refresh the Cabinets:
Here’s How to Do It:
We pulled out the cabinet drawers, and to speed things along we used a cordless drill to remove the cabinet doors.
To ensure our new paint would adhere properly we thoroughly cleaned all the surfaces and sanded off any residue.
We used our cut-in brush to outline and fill in all the grooved areas in the doors and drawers.
We used our foam rollers to apply a thin layer of cabinet paint to all the flat surfaces on the doors, drawers, and cabinet frames.
After allowing the first layer of paint to dry for a full 12 hours, we repeated steps 3 & 4 to apply a second layer.
Once dry, we installed our new handles and drawer pulls with a screwdriver (a drill might damage the wood).
Final step: we re-installed our newly painted doors and drawers back onto our newly painted cabinet frames.
Here’s What You’ll Need to Create the Feature Wall*:
(1) 2″x12″ Pine (12-foot length)
(1) 7.5″ Shiplap
BeautiTone Designer Cabinet & Furniture Paint
*Lumber may vary depending on your location. To see all your options, use our Store Locator to find the Home Hardware Building Centre or Home Building Centre closest to you.
Here’s How to Do It:
We removed the old cabinets with a cordless drill. Note, this is a two-person job as the cabinets can be heavy.
We used a mitre saw to cut our shiplap boards to our desired wall length. We did this outside because we needed the space and didn’t want to fill our kitchen with sawdust.
Shiplap has a tongue and groove design, so installation was pretty easy. We used 2″ finishing nails, tapping them in from the ceiling downwards to the floor.
We finished off our shiplap with 2 coats of paint.
For our shelves, we cut our 12′ pine into two 6’ sections and sanded down the rough edges.
Once clean, we finished the shelves off with two coats of BeautiTone Wood-Shield Stain.
We used a stud finder to locate our studs behind the shiplap, then screwed in our shelf brackets with the cordless drill
Final step: we placed our shelves onto the brackets and admired our handiwork!
I had always assumed we would need to replace our kitchen cupboards but this cabinet paint has completely transformed the cabinets. They look completely new! The shiplap feature wall creates a coastal-boho vibe, and the pine shelving makes for an open flow to the kitchen. The pine wood itself also brings a warm, inviting feeling to our kitchen. We couldn’t have done it without the great staff at our local Home Hardware. They gave us excellent advice and were always happy to help.
