What if your kitchen’s surfaces were never expected to have a 50-year life span?
The listing agent for a home in Thornton faced exactly that problem. But she had seen a product at a trade show that intrigued her.
So Kirsten Chapman called public-relations client Ann Cummiskey, who owns the Ace Hardware store in Greenwood Village, and enlisted her to test whether a few people with very basic skills could do a cabinet makeover.
Buyers who viewed the Thornton house said its solid ’90s kitchen lacked excitement.
“It was kind of all over the place,” Cummiskey said of the room. “Yellow walls and off-white walls, and it had those light oak cabinets that were kind of generic in homes from the last 10 years. So it needed a little change.”
When you’re talking kitchen cabinets, though, change can cost big bucks. “There just wasn’t $15,000 in equity in this home to tap,” Chapman said. Refacing still costs in the low thousands.
But … paint your own cabinets?
“It’s kind of intimidating for most people,” Cummiskey said. “They say, ‘Will it really look OK?’ We said, ‘Let’s give it a try.’ And it changed these plain, builder-grade cabinets into something that looked like furniture.”
The kit is Rust-Oleum’s Cabinet Transformations, which retails for about $150 and covers 200 square feet (there’s a smaller, less expensive kit for bathrooms).
It’s not an overnight project. But there’s no stripping or sanding involved, so the two women and one helper got the new look on in about five days. Cummiskey and Chapman said true DIY marathoners might be able to do it in three days if they really gunned it.
Perhaps the hardest part was choosing one of the 70 colors. Cummiskey and Chapman looked at what was trending — darker, richer colors — and asked the homeowners what they liked just in case they had to live with it for a while. They went with a chocolate brown.
They took off doors and drawers, numbering and mapping each one to its location in the shell (don’t skip this step, both women warned — you would be surprised how cabinet doors all look alike after a few days). This is where a homeowner might ponder new hardware such as hinges, pulls and knobs.
“The only thing with that is, you’ve got to make sure the new pulls or whatever you decide to do are going to match up with current holes that you’ve got,” Cummiskey said. “It has to be done at the very beginning.”
Otherwise, you have to fill the old holes with putty and drill new ones, and things gets a bit more complicated.
The prep steps are the same as for any painting project: Taping and drop-cloth-flinging and a trip to the store for paintbrushes. And perhaps a session watching the included DVD.
The kit’s first step is a deglosser, a heavy-duty cleaner that eliminates the need for sanding or stripping, along with the mess and dust of those steps. “We did it in their living room,” Chapman said. “It doesn’t smell at all.”
Two “bonding coats” apply the new color — anything in a range from whites to “toasted almond” to plums and blacks. Each coat of color needs a half day to dry, and the deglossing and bonding coats also need to be applied to the cabinets’ shells (the part still attached to the home’s walls).
A glazing coat, the consistency of a stain, creates what looks like wood grain — or any other effect you choose. It doesn’t take a lot of practice or a degree in paint effects. “I would practice on the back side first,” Cummiskey said. “But you just get it right away. You see how it works and you feel comfortable with it.”
What if you’re all thumbs with the glaze step or lose your nerve and rethink that shade of hot plum? “You just paint over it,” Chapman said.
Finally, a polyurethane topcoat goes on to protect the new finish from chips, scratches and the kind of grime kitchens dish out.
Then it’s rehang, relax and enjoy. Chapman’s sale-home kitchen in Thornton also got a new microwave and faucet, a single color of paint and new light fixtures.
The home sold at its next showing.
