I think a lot of people know that a good trick to saving money when they want to remodel their kitchen or bathrooms is to keep the cabinets and either paint or stain them. Well, I just wanted to show you proof that this is true.

In my old condo we wanted to redo our guest bathroom because it looked gross. Seriously it was bad. People would come out with their nose wrinkled, and I just knew they were thinking their body was probably infected with some horrible fungus just by stepping in there. However, we didn’t have a big budget. After finding a beautiful black-framed mirror for cheap ($17.77 in the clearance section at Furniture Warehouse on Redwood Road!) we decided to paint the water-warped cabinets to match. We had tried to stain the cabinets a few months earlier, but it just brought out the flaws even more. I was very pleased with the outcome of our paint job.

Here are my tips if you decide to paint your cabinets:

• Make sure to take the hinges off the doors and frames when painting. Nothing says tacky more than half painted hardware.
• Sand and wash each piece so there isn’t any gunk and so the paint will stick.
• Prime your cabinets and doors. Don’t skip this step just to save money. It always helps the finished product look better and stay nicer longer.
• Choose either semi- or high-gloss paint. Why? Because your cabinets are going to be around water and food. These finishes clean up real nice and won’t stain. (PS I hate flat paint in all it’s forms. I painted a front room with it once…big mistake.)
• If you want to do this to your kitchen but are a bit nervous, try it in your bathroom first, just to make sure you like the outcome. A lot of houses have the same type of cabinets in the bathrooms, so once you paint or stain them you will know exactlywhat to do differently if you don’t like it. I’m so glad we did this in our condo. We were going to stain all our kitchen cabinets, but once we saw the outcome on the cabinets in the bathroom we knew it would have been an ugly mess in the kitchen.

Enjoy the before and after pictures!

Here are a few things I would have done to this room if I had stayed in this condo a bit longer: bought some sweet handles for the cabinet doors, replaced the faucet, and actually have bought a toilet paper holder. Those seem to work well in bathrooms for some reason.

Tags: Advice, DIY, Home Decorating in Utah--Tips!, Interior Design Ideas, Uncategorized //