I blame it on the Home Depot commercials, Pinterest, and an excellent tutorial from my friend Amy. Sometimes being fearless has some perks, we decided to stain all the kitchen cabinets. Our cabinets were the contractor grade oak, and the kitchen was just an orange explosion. The kitchen is my favorite room in the house, and orange just isn't in my color wheel. I followed this tutorial and got to work. Do NOT substitute the gel stain. With San Antonio being a big city there is a Woodcraft store pretty close to us. I know you can get it on Amazon as well. I wanted more of a custom color than they had. The Java color is a gorgeous brown, but I wanted a little red in there as well. I made a custom mix of a quart of Georgian Cherry to 1/2 pint of Java. The Georgian Cherry is pretty bold and I wanted to make it a little darker and rich. I started in the guest bathroom, that way if I ruined it we could just close the door. (sorry guests!) One of the best perks of the gel stain is minimal sanding and you can use it over the plastic-y laminate siding on the sides.
The biggest drawback was the humidity in San Antonio. Each door had to be stained on each side 2-3x and I had to wait 24hrs for it to be completely dry. Since summers here are pretty hot I cleared out the kitchen and made it my workshop. Complete with A/C and awesome fans.
After the guest bathroom turned out so good, we decided to go for it. We literally stained every last piece of wood in our house.
I love it!! It turned out better than I could have hoped. I also remade a table and chairs we found on craigslist. The backsplash was the easiest part. I used 1,2,3 Primer to prep the orange tile backsplash and then I painted it with Behr Premium Ultra paint in Polar Bear. It was so fast! 30min project.
The biggest drawback was the humidity in San Antonio. Each door had to be stained on each side 2-3x and I had to wait 24hrs for it to be completely dry. Since summers here are pretty hot I cleared out the kitchen and made it my workshop. Complete with A/C and awesome fans.
After the guest bathroom turned out so good, we decided to go for it. We literally stained every last piece of wood in our house.
I love it!! It turned out better than I could have hoped. I also remade a table and chairs we found on craigslist. The backsplash was the easiest part. I used 1,2,3 Primer to prep the orange tile backsplash and then I painted it with Behr Premium Ultra paint in Polar Bear. It was so fast! 30min project.
First coat panic...
During
Guest Bathroom Finished!
Priming the backsplash
You would never guess this was laminate wood.
Before and After on the Kitchen Table and Chairs
Kitchen Before and After
Once again, my absolute favorite room in the house. It was a huge project, but I'm glad we went for it. It's exactly what we wanted, there is something so gratifying about making your house a home with your own two hands.
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