Ahhh! I am so excited to be writing this post! We recently finished our DIY kitchen renovation + I’m ready to share it all with you. It was a crazy project, because we didn’t really expect to renovate, it just sort of happened! We first just were planning on painting our backsplash, but then that led to a whole bunch of things, LOL! So here’s a look at our kitchen renovation.
Like I mentioned, we actually PAINTED our kitchen backsplash. Can you believe it?! It was actually pretty simple. We used Homax White Tough as Tile and used both a brush and roller to paint it on. This stuff is awesome, but you HAVE TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. There are a LOT of important cleaning steps involved. Not hard, just tedious.
So we cleaned the backsplash (definitely was the cleanest it’s ever been). Then we prepped the area by removing the outlet plates, and taping around everything we didn’t want paint on. We didn’t have drop cloths, so we used garbage bags to cover our granite.
The crazy thing about the Homax White Tough as Tile paint is that you have to wait 3 hours in between coats, and not longer than 6 hours. So it’s definitely a project you need to plan out. We ended up needing 3 coats so it felt like it took all day… well it did take all day LOL. Another tricky thing about the paint is that it’s a very drying paint. So you have to work quickly while you paint. I used the paintbrush and did the top and bottom of the backsplash and the grout lines, and Dave did the roller right behind me. You can’t go back over things you already painted, either – so you have to be careful the first time.
So anyways, we painted the backsplash + loved it!! But as we stepped back, we realized that the backsplash looked SO good and it started to make the top cabinets look… well, old? Or yellow? We weren’t too sure, but it made us want to rip out the upper cabinets and replace it with some modern open shelving! So that was the next step!
We ripped out a few of the upper cabinets + started working on the open shelves! We bought 2in. x 12in x 10ft. #2 prime kiln dried southern yellow pine lumber from Home Depot. It was only $13 per board + we only needed 2!
The boards were perfect, but they were a little ROUGH around the edges, if you know what I mean. So we sanded the boards first. Then we white washed the boards with a mixture of one part white chalk paint, and 3 parts water. We brushed it on and immediately wiped it off.
Then we sanded the boards again, and added 2 layers of Minwax Gloss Water-Based Polyurethane.
Before hanging up the shelves, we put in all new handles on the kitchen cabinets that were left. We got this set from amazon + absolutely LOVE them!!
We also painted the wall where the upper cabinets were.
Then we measured and hung up the L brackets. We got ours here.
We cut the wood boards to size and drilled them into the brackets. Gah… I love them so much!
My favorite part was the decorating! I’m so happy to have open shelving because not only does it totally upgrade our kitchen, now I can update them whenever I want! I can’t wait to style them for Christmas!
Here are some decor items I used to decorate the shelves with:
And is a before and after photo of our kitchen renovation project!
