What's Gray and White and Better All Over?

We realize it's been a while since there has been an update, but we had a good reason. WE MOVED INTO THE HOUSE. It has taken some time, a couple days, and some really good friends, but a majority of our (what feels like) enormous amount of stuff is now in our new home. Though it's mostly just boxes sitting on the floor for the time being, it makes the place feel more like home with our couch in the living room and our bed in the bedroom.

The projects that we've been working on have also been keeping us busy. This post is going to be a bit long. The first thing we tackled was the kitchen.

(Sorry about the picture quality. My nice camera is still packed up!)

The night after we signed (which was Thursday at 5pm in case you were wondering), we high-tailed it over to our new abode and I immediately asked Scott to start taking down the cabinet doors. Two of our friends were nice enough to come over and help us clean and wipe down the cabinets. A days worth of work for one person turned into a couple hours for three people (Scott may have fallen asleep, lol).

Between the three of us, we pulled up so many sunflowers, too!

So in the end, we were left with this.

The next day, three friends helped me run some steel wool over the cabinets and their doors before we were able to start painting. We were a little worried that the paint wouldn't stick to the doors since they had previously been stained, but the steel wool really helped with adhesion. I used one door as a guinea pig for some liquid de-glosser, but was not impressed. By the end of day two, we were lookin' pretty good.

The first coat of paint went on pretty smoothly. The white looked fantastic on the top, but the gray bottoms looked....white. Really white. If anything, it looked like they were in shadow. The color sample looked correct in any other room of the house, just not in the kitchen. The direct light was washing it out and making it look waaaay too light.

 Womp Womp. So sad. So I went to Home Depot (for probably the 5th time that day) and had it retinted. Thinking that tinting had done the trick, I returned home and made a second attempt.

And failed.

The third trip to Home Depot involved a hardcore session of, "USE ALL THE TINT" that finished the job. I came home and applied yet another coat. Success!

The corrected gray is on the right. This is a terrible picture, but I swear, it's got more UMPH. So, a couple more coats later, and we're looking pretty good on the color.

The handles that we found are actually pretty awesome, too. Scott and I wandered into Target where we found that they sell cabinet hardware (who knew?!). Not only do they sell them, but their prices are some of the best we've seen.

We were really drawn to these guys so we picked up two packs and headed home. We still need a couple more, but that's all they had, so we're ordering online. Scott isn't a fan of knobs because, "They always end up loose", and I tend to agree. The handles were a great alternative. These will be a nice statement, especially since the kitchen is large enough to not feel crowded by this type of hardware.

Because we are doing this all on a small budget, we're trying to reuse as much as we can. Obviously, the cabinets that we are using are the wooden ones that came with the house. They didn't come with any handles, so those had to be purchased, but they did come with hinges.

They were in good working order, so I decided to just reuse them for the makeover. Unfortunately, they weren't the right color to match the handles we had picked out. This is pretty easily fixed.

First, I gave them a good scrub down. A lot of them had grime and spider webs on them that were too gross to paint over. Once they were web-free and dried, I laid them out on cardboard in the garage and cracked the door open. I would have done this step outside or with the door completely open, but it's been raining in Kentucky in hour intervals for weeks, so I didn't like my chances.

I am also reusing the screws, so I just punched them through the cardboard enough to get a coat of paint on the heads of the screws (since that's the only part that will show). That's them with the first coat!

Here are the hinges.

Lookin' sexy after three coats. If you do paint hinges, make sure that you paint both sides and the portion of the axis itself that is hidden when the hinge is opened or closed. Cover all your bases!

So that is where we are at right now. We aren't quite done, and there are going to be a lot of posts this week due to all the process, but we are certainly making headway. Scott and I love the way that everything is turning out, and we were even more excited to enjoy all this on our one year wedding anniversary (Which was Sunday, the 21st).

Have you ever done a low budget makeover? How did it go? Let me know in the comments!