We were just thinking back to when we (meaning Garrett) were painting our kitchen cabinets. Garrett was working 40+ hours a week at his regular job making custom furniture and we had a one-year-old and another baby due in just a few weeks.
Garrett had both furniture painting experience from his current job and an airless sprayer, so we figured the job wouldn’t be too hard to take on.
Painting Our Kitchen – Our Personal Experience
We had purchased our home as a foreclosure just a couple years earlier. After completing all of the bigger projects we wanted to do, we were finally ready to do something about the outdated oak cabinets. We didn’t have $20,000+ to put into all new cabinets, and as I mentioned, Garrett had painting experience, so we decided to get some white, cabinet-grade paint and at least change the color to brighten up the space and make it look a bit more modern. Garrett’s boss at the time had also graciously given him access to the spray booth, so he could take all of the doors to the shop and paint them much more efficiently. I (Marissa) was so excited for our kitchen to be so much brighter and to get rid of the unsightly oak.
What we didn’t fully realize is that painting a kitchen in the evenings after work, masking off the entire room with plastic, and somehow trying to cook three meals a day with a one-year-old in said masked-off room would take a lot longer and prove more challenging than we thought.
The Cost of DIYing our Kitchen Space
When the plastic was torn down and the kitchen (mostly) back to normal, it had been over 2 weeks of Garrett having to miss evenings with our daughter and eat dinner with the family. Our next baby was going to arrive in less than a month, and we still had a lot to do to get ready. We were so excited that evenings of painting at the shop were over, but there was still work to do to hang and adjust the doors.
A few more hours of hanging doors stretched over a few days as we juggled everyday life and other projects we needed to do to prepare for the baby.
Finally, it was finished!
It was September, and I was canning jars and jars of applesauce and was just in love with the new cabinets (I still am!). The kitchen felt so much cleaner and brighter in white!
The Problem – Our Cabinets Were Still Outdated
Although I loved the change from the grimy oak to bright white, we had to look at our doors and realize that the problem of outdated cabinets wasn’t fully solved.
Even though we had a fresh color on the doors, they still had a semi-outdated profile, and the wood grain persisted to show through in certain places, even with many coats of sanding. The door quality and construction quality was also poor, and on top of the dated profile, we realized in retrospect that the doors themselves should really have just been replaced.
Our kitchen looks much better than it did before the cabinet painting – we both agree on that! And while we were glad to have it done, it’s not a process that we want to repeat. It was very disruptive to our home (plastic everywhere, unusable rooms, and paint fumes), meant a loss of hours of family time, and still left us with a result that wasn’t exactly what we wanted.
That experience was one of the big events that led us to explore cabinet refacing.
Starting Veracity and Why We Chose Cabinet Refacing
We wholeheartedly believe in the home as a place of nourishment, productivity, hospitality, comfort, and the center of family life. Even more-so, the kitchen is the place where much of this happens! After our DIY cabinet painting experience, we really wanted other families to be able to have kitchens they love to be in, without the weeks, hassle, and headache of trying to paint their own cabinets on evenings and weekends (and possibly still ending up with mediocre cabinets). We also wanted a more affordable option than having to get all new cabinets.
We love that cabinet refacing solves all of these problems! Cabinet refacing…
- Updates not just the color, but also the style and functionality of the cabinets with new doors and a painted or wood veneer
- Saves thousands of dollars compared to buying new cabinets
- Keeps the paint fumes and majority of the mess out of your home
- Allows you to use your appliances for breakfast and dinner each day during the install
- Can be completed in just 1-2 weeks – without taking away from your time with your family or hobbies
- Overall, gives you a stress-free and affordable solution for creating a kitchen you love!
Want to Avoid the Hassle of DIYing Your Kitchen Update?
If a functional, paint-fume free home, weekends and evenings with your family, and a kitchen you love are important to you, cabinet refacing might be the perfect solution for your home. We’d love to help you avoid the experience we had with updating our kitchen cabinets! We love that we’ve been able to take the experience we had and use it to create a solution that helps other homeowners.
We’d love to talk with you about the best way to transform your kitchen into a space you love! Just schedule a phone call today to get started!