Our Kitchen: Planning Phase

When Ty and I bought our first home we knew that updating the kitchen would be high on our to do list... Thankfully, all we really need/want to do is paint the cabinets and add hardware to them. Ideally we'd love to replace the countertops but that's not as high on the list. 

I originally thought we'd hire someone to paint the cabinets, but Ty has done several projects around the house that are much more difficult than painting cabinets... So, here we go, diving head first into a huge project that we will most likely wonder what in the world were we thinking... BUT.. It's fun working on your house together and there's nothing like accomplishing a big project DIY style...

First up, let me show you what our kitchen currently looks like...

(view from the living room)

There's really nothing wrong with it at all.. and, in fact, some people may prefer the oak/orange color but I have always wanted white cabinets.. always. The cabinets are in great shape. I really don't even dislike the countertops. I'd rather have granite but I think the light countertops and the white cabinets would look perfectly fine together.

Here are a few more pictures of our kitchen...

(our eat-in area of the kitchen)

Now for the inspiration pictures.. I tried to find pictures of kitchens that seemed similar to ours...

via

I love this kitchen tutorial.. It's a great one and I learned a lot of good information from this site.

via

I love the open cabinet concept... I think I want to leave a few cabinets open...

The cabinets labeled 1, 2 and 3 are the cabinets I'd like to leave the doors off.

I went to Lowe's yesterday and talked to one of the painter guys who offered up a TON of tips and ideas that encouraged me to tackle this project. He suggested that we use this instead of sanding the cabinets...

I've used this when I painted an end table, but I've never used it on such a large project like kitchen cabinets. Have any of you ever used this? Do we sand or use the deglosser? We have a sander so that's no problem to sand instead if we needed to.

I also found this hardware that I think would look amazing on the white cabinets. We kind of have a rustic feel going on in our eat-in kitchen and I think these knobs would look so cool and unexpected...

I love all of the options in the set except I wouldn't use the drop down pull for the kitchen.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has painted kitchen cabinets or has any tips to offer! What do you think of the ideas we have so far? I'd love to know! 

love, Darian