Ghetto Glorious Hutch Makeover

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The Maxilicious Mini Kitchen Makeover has taken another turn. This one cost me no money just elbow grease which I have plenty to spare. My elbows are actually insured for $1,000,000 because they are so effective!

Once we got the floor lookin' all snazzy and shazam-like, my floor-to-ceiling hutch was lookin' 10 steps over the line of old and crusty. And cluttered. 

Mainly because in order to cover up this mess below, I had to add shelf liner and I no longer adored this look.

And do you see that piece of green tile wedged in there below! That was covering the top when we first moved in.  They must have gotten a smokin' deal on this tile 'cuz it was everywhere. And I have discovered under the white paint that the hutch was painted green to match. This must have been one pea-green room. 

In other news about our previous owners….did I tell you the one about how they had covered the real wood steps in the foyer with fake wood looking linoleum??? Yep, total decor home run that one was. But I have totally digressed…..

 So this top had to be done up and fast. So in came my heat gun and metal scraper and the afore mentioned elbow grease...

 And then the sander gave it several passes.  They really gouged the heck out of the front and no matter how much sanding you do, it isn't going to look great so I wasn't sure how that was gonna look once finished.

 I was torn between waxing it as is above and staining it. In the end my son thought it looked a little ghetto unstained so I stained it in Minwax Jacobean to appease the ghetto gods. 

If I lived by myself though…….total ghetto glory!

As I suspected, the ghetto gods looked down on my staining of their naturally good wood and the gouges looked bad…as did the pits with paint in them. No amount of finger sanding (using only your finger and a corner of the sand paper to sand in tight crazy spaces…my own made-up ghetto DIY word) was getting that out. So I used my dark brown sharpie and permanently colored in the gouges and the paint!

Not perfect but then ghetto glory isn't what you would call perfect. But it does nod to the fact that this hutch is over 100+ years old so it shouldn't look brand new.

 A bit of de-cluttering and sprucing it up made a big difference. 

Plus Santa is smiling down on my efforts!

 My black charging station got some new paint and fancy paper

 My son's snail whistle is a lovely jolt of orange to go with the green and the pottery…. and is useful to call the chittlins for dinner.

I use a cricket basket for my scrap paper and it holds a pencil quite nicely!

Don't cha love these old canisters?? I got them at the Goodwill for $1.99 each and they just needed to be re-glued and oiled to bring out their ghetto goodness

Plus I love them because they hold my metal scoops without having the lids stay up. They are from Japan!

 It looks like it ran back over the old crusty line to vintage and original goodness real fast…and I love it.

What say you?

Would you use a Sharpie to fix issues? 

Do you have a hankering for Japanese storage now?

And the bigger question of the day:

Who has better decor sense:

the Ghetto Gods or Santa? 

Always being renewed,

Please see the link party page to see where I link arms with those blissfully beautiful bloggers that host every week. So gracious they are along with these other sweet ladies!

Read more at http://diyshowoff.com/2013/04/01/that-diy-party-10/#xgMAcRCgRocl5vmh.99       

 

 

http://www.remodelaholic.com

How to give your cabinet a custom built-in look

I wanted to take the time to show you how I added some wood feet and a wood cornice to my kitchen to give it a more built-in furniture like appearance using just scrap wood!

I knew that I wanted to add feet to my cabinets partly because I love the custom look of it and also I needed to hide my crappy toe kick. Now I could have just re-painted my toe kicks black but that would not take it up to the level that I wanted. I wanted a custom cabinetry look and for that, you need wood.

Here are a few before pics to show you what I am talking about: Blah and ugly.

I had several old pieces of wood that were the right width so I figured I couldn't make this look 

any worse. 

I had been looking at feet at several stores and decided I liked the across the cabinet look rather that just two feet added at either end of the cabinet. 

So how do you do this? So simple you will dance a St. Patrick's Day jig!

You will need:

scrap 1x4's

scrap 1 x 6

jigsaw

drill/drillbits

2.5" wood screws

cardboard

level

paintable caulk

your cabinet color paint

First you need to make your template. I made mine by measuring from the bottom of the cabinet to the floor and cut a piece of cardboard that wide. Then I decided how wide I wanted the top and end of my piece to be. My top edge is 1.5 inches wide and my leg is only 1 inch wide.  Then I connected the two marks by using a bowl to make the rounded inside edge.  Once this was completed, I held it under the toe kick to make sure that I liked it. My original was too curved at the floor end of the leg so I am glad I eyeballed it first before cutting. 

Now you are going to measure the length of each cabinet and cut a 1x4 to that length. A 1 x 4 fit perfectly snug under my toe kick. I needed to make three of these: 34", 36", and 18". I was going to put one under the dishwasher too until I realized that it would make the door not open. Whew!

Then all you do is trace the template on each end and connect the ends with a straight line using a level or straight edge.

Cut along the line with a jigsaw and the board clamped to a solid unmoving surface. I claimed it to my built- in workbench. Dry fit it in place before painting. I had to cut my 33" piece a little off the top on the left hand side because the floor is that off. Take any thing like that off of the top so the line of the cutout remains level. Once everything fits well, sand all rough edges and prime and paint. Remember to paint the underside of the cutout and the sides. The side of the sink base leg will show on the dishwasher side and all of the indices can be seen at some angle.

Now pre-drill your holes through the base of the cabinet frame and with the legs in place using a drill bit that is 2" long and slightly smaller in diameter than the wood screws you will use. Do this so you do not split the cabinet frame or your new leg. I used 2.5" long screws and I used two screws per door opening.

Once attached, this is what it looks like. Here is where paintable caulk is your best friend! Run a bead along all of your seams here and wipe with your finger so it is nice and flat, no raised edges. Really make sure there is no excess chalk left because every bump and ridge will suddenly show up when you paint and then it looks amateurish so run your finger over it  to make sure there aren't any raised surfaces  and is very smooth after you caulk. You just spent a lot of time making the paint on your cabinets look smooth and awesome so don't mess up this last task. 

Not putting pressure you you here, just want you to get awesome results. 

 I used the same template and technique to make a cornice to cover my ugly light. I think by making this the same cutout as the feet, it completely ties all of the cabinets together as one cohesive unit. The only difference was I used a 1x6 instead of a 1x4 and attached it through the side frame of the cabinets. I also caulked here.

If you look carefully between all of the cabinets, there is a bad gap. This did not show up until I painted them. The original wood was so dark that the gaps were not noticed. But wow were they noticeable once painted. So while I was caulking my new feet and cornice, I also caulked all of my cabinet seams. 

This is the upper cabinet caulk as it is drying. It starts out white and dries clear which is ridiculously helpful. It saves you having to touch the caulk to see if it is dry and marring the surface you just tried so hard to get super smooth.

Completely built-in look with just scraps.

$0 cost

100% return on effort!

Always being renewed,

Please see the link party page to see where I link arms with those blissfully beautiful bloggers that host every week. So gracious they are along with these other sweet ladies!

Read more at http://diyshowoff.com/2013/04/01/that-diy-party-10/#xgMAcRCgRocl5vmh.99       

 

 

http://www.remodelaholic.com