natesgram, thanks, I've actually seen that link before, and it's what really pushed me towards painting. It really has a lot of helpful info too. As much as I would love to get new doors (shaker is my favorite!), I'm going with paint for now. The wallpaper...yes, I don't see what's wrong with it either. I took a really close up shot just to show the blue specks, but it really just looks like textured cream colored walls. I would like to know if the suggestions to remove it are because it's ugly/dated or more for resale purposes where painted walls are the preference for most buyers??? alabamanicole, now that I look at it some more, I agree the track lighting needs to go. It should be easy and inexpensive ($100-150?) to change it out. I love the look of bronze, but would it work with my ss appliances and ss cabinet pulls? Or should I get bronze pulls and faucet...CAN you have a bronze faucet and a stainless steel sink? Confusing! Also, thanks for your kitchen idea. The rest of my house is decorated with warm creams, reds, greens. I love organic stuff like wicker, stone, metal, and I love shaker style, country style, and arts-n-crafts style. I really like cream cabinets, but I already have enough cream with the counter, the tile, and the wall. The breakfast bar opens into the dining room, which is has cream furniture and red and green as the accent colors. The kitchen doesn't have to be matchy-matchy with the adjoining rooms, but it should flow colorwise. I'm going for a sleek, simple, yet casual and warm look with bluish/green cabinets. Below are kitchen looks that I love. Some won't work with my sleek cabinets, but it's just to everyone an idea of the look and feel that I hope to achieve... I love the color on this wall...if I ever take down my wallpaper! lol I love the warmth and casualness of cream cabinets. My dream kitchen...if I could start from scratch! :) Here, I love how the bottom cabinets are darker than the top cabs. Cute chandelier, and the island color is gorgeous! Ok, since I also LOVE the idea of two cabinet colors, what if I paint my top cabs cream and my bottom cabs blue/green? I really can't decide between my two colors below, and painting all the cabs either color will be too much cream in the room, or too much blue/green in the the room...no? I'm also open to sage green. If I go with using two colors, what if I paint the storage wall like the storage wall below (where the top and sides would be the blue/green color)?

I know this is kind of an old post, but I thought I'd weigh in. For awhile I have wanted to paint my boring builder grade oak cabinets, and I just today happened upon the existence of Rustoleum's cabinet finishing system. I was hoping it would be SPRAY PAINT (for an easy, smooth finish), but I watched the little video they have on their website, and the "system" involves a deglosser, a paint, an optional glaze, and a finishing top coat. It all needs to be brushed on. Quite frankly it seems to me that Rustoleum has just finally caught on to the fact that a lot of people are painting their builder grade cabinets (with good results) and they wanted to capitalize on that fact. If you do a search, you will find TONS of very good blog entries with step-by-step instructions and before and after shots. Some bloggers used brushes, some invested in paint sprayers, some used oil-based paints, and some used latex. Those who had problems make pretty clear exactly what mistakes they made so that anyone else trying the same thing can avoid those mistakes. I'm thinking now of doing a "test run" on my (yup, builder grade oak) bathroom vanity. Any of the techniques discovered by these bloggers seem no more difficult than, and often easier than, Rustoleum's system. I know you really want to refinish your cabinets, and I do believe that with the right materials and a careful technique, it can be done well (though it will be a TON of work.) But, maybe you can be persuaded to try something else. My husband purchased our current house (new) about 8 years ago, before he met me. So, I got no say in what was in the house. (He really didn't, either, as it was a spec home and almost complete when he bought it.) Unfortunately, much in the house is boring, cheapy builder grade, from the glossy brass doorknobs to the hollow panelled doors to the vinyl flooring, and I am slowly changing out small things to make the house look better and less generic. It seems everywhere, the builders opted for the cheapest items, and where there was a choice in color (say, white or black exterior light fixtures) they went with the "wrong" choice. (White wrought iron-style lanterns flanking the front door of a traditional white house with black shutters? Why not black, which costs the same, and seems the most obvious choice?!) For several years I have HATED the kitchen cabinets and have, as I mentioned, wanted to paint them (white, in my case.) My husband is really against this, as he thinks it would be terrible to cover up the "beautiful" wood grain. I might agree with him if these were handmade custom cabinets, but the sides of the cabinet itself aren't even wood at all! It's a laminate picture of wood on top of fiber board. The doors and fronts of the cabinets are real wood, but obviously, nothing special. Still... I have not convinced him yet. And, I'm actually coming around to the idea of leaving them wood grain. I have found that with the right wall color and some nice hardware, these cabinets don't look bad at all. Fortunately, my kitchen is bright and sunny, with a patio door, another exterior door, and a window. I painted the walls Glidden's "Uplifting" which is a buttery yellow. If you do a search online the "swatches" will look very peachy, but this is not peachy at all on the walls. It's a cheery yellow, but not overly bright, and not too cool or lemony. I chose it from a paint chip and was amazed how well it went with the oak tone. I absolutely love it. (I'll just add that one of my two majors in college was art so I am sort of obsessive about getting color and color combinations right.) I also added new door knobs and drawer pulls in sort of a wrought iron look. I loved them in the store but wasn't sure if they'd seem too dark against the oak, but they look fantastic and weren't that expensive (I got them at Lowe's... if I could find a link to them I'd post it.) Between a good paint color and new hardware (and hardware is a MUST on boring oak cabinets) it really looks pretty good. The current countertops are a very boring grey granite-look laminate, which is not what I would have picked, but the color is okay for now and actually looks much nicer now that the walls are no longer white. My top choice for countertops is soapstone, which is very expensive, but we have a relatively small counter area. My second choice would be black granite or some sort of dark Corian. I also want to get a new faucet and at some point, a new farmer's sink (right now we have a typical double stainless steel sink.) Another long-range goal (long-range more because we're kind of lazy and less because of the cost) is to add a simple crown moulding to the top of the cabinets. But right now, with some plants and nice accessories topping the cabinets, and some nice little rugs on the floor, these cabinets look pretty good. The key to making them look good, I think, is to use contrast. I've got a nice 12-pane divided light window over my sink (and between two cabinets) and on one side of the sill I have a bright blue glazed flower pot and dish with a plant which is primarily green foliage, and on the other side of the sill are two 6" standard terra cotta pots and saucers, with herbs growing in them. I have a small oak (or maple?) table with oak (or maple?)windsor chairs on one side of my kitchen and on top of it is a second (matching) blue flower pot/dish with a green plant. I've got a small hooked rug in front of the sink which pulls together almost the exact shades of the yellow walls, blue pot, and green plants, along with a bit of red. I have some plants, cookbooks, and baskets above the cabinets... but the key is to keep it clean. This might sound like a lot of clutter, but it doesn't look that way. These are carefully-selected items and what I have come up with is sort of a warm country look that is still clean and manages to avoid the typical tacky dried flowers/wicker baskets/knick knacks of some country looks. An upscale look, it is not, but it is a warm and comfortable look. Basically... if you're like me... you probably want - fiercely! - to refinish your kitchen cabinets. But, if you play around with accessories and wall color, you might find that you can make the oak either recede and no longer be a dominant feature in your kitchen, or you can actually accentuate it and make it look like nice wood and an integral part of the kitchen, rather than like the cheap default choice. I guess it depends on what look you're going for. You're never going to get a truly "luxury" look with these cabinets, even if you do custom crown moulding, granite counter tops, and stainless steel appliances. But there are other looks you can do, and they don't have to be all-out country, although the oak cabinets do lend themselves well to a country look. You can get a pretty sophisticated look if you use the right colors for the wall and the right accessories. You could go Tuscan, for example. Play around!

linelle - Painting the DW was pretty painless. DH removed the door panel, which also has the sides on it on my KA model, and I took it out back and scrubbed it with soapy water, rinsed well and let dry. Then, I lightly scuffed with fine grit sandpaper like 180 or 220 and wiped down with a dry, lint free cloth. Sprayed first coat and let dry, then sprayed second coat and let dry. DH put the panel back on and you can see the result below. As I said though, I want to try and see if I can paint the plastic part at the top with that Krylon paint that fuses with plastic so it won't wear off. The door latch is in that part (obviously) and gets touched a lot so I want something that will last. The appliance epoxy I used was a Rustoleum product. It looks so much better painted than the white is used to be, but not nearly as nice as an actual SS DW will when I can afford it. I'm planning to paint my fridge also with the same paint at some point as it is all white too. Much bigger job than just the DW door panel, however. Before: After with partial backsplash install.

Thanks, everyone, for your kind words. This was truly a labor of love. The DIY had nothing to do with saving money. We just like doing things ourselves. Plus, it makes you feel like you really accomplished something. Bemsue, yes, I love the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations product. I have done two bathroom vanities, three pieces of bedroom furniture, and one kitchen with it. It is very similar to a gel-based stain in texture, but it is water-based. It covers more fully than a stain, though. The one thing I don't like is the water-based poly you put on at the end. It is hard to work with, but I made the best of it. I supposed I could've bought another brand of water-based poly. Using that product on a kitchen is not for the faint of heart, though. It took so long to do all that painting. You have to do two coats of paint on each door, front and back. Then the poly coat on top. I guess I can say that all the work was worth it, but I don't know if I'd have the nerve to do it again. The bathroom vanities and furniture didn't take long to do, though. Kellienoelle, I cannot commit to knobs/pulls yet. I was going to just put brushed chrome round knobs, but you can see that the long drawers on the right side would not look right with round knobs, and I didn't think I wanted any pulls in the kitchen. So I am at a standstill on that. Lillyvt, I appreciate your honest feedback about the stools. I know they probably don't fit aesthetically, but we bought those when we first moved in here, and they are very functional. They support your back, swivel, move up and down, are vinyl and easy to clean, are comfy, and support a lot of weight. So for now we are keeping them. Gardenpixie, the size of our island is 51" x 28". The space from island to cabinets is 33" on the left and 32" on the right. As far as the 3 floor-to-ceiling pantries next to the fridge goes, my opinion is it may be too heavy since you won't have the lower counter next to the fridge, but who knows, it could look amazing. I have spent countless hours both in this forum and on other websites looking at kitchen pics. I don't know why I decided on black for the cabinets. My husband painted the kitchen cabinets in our old house white, and I wanted something different. White shows dirt easily, yellows with acrylic + water-based poly over it, and shows cabinet imperfections more. I debated on doing a dark brown/espresso color, but ultimately decided on black. Black isn't done a lot in kitchens, and I wanted to do something different. Because of the crown moulding on the cabs and my valance, pendant, and cat picture on the wall, I think it still has a feminine touch without looking too masculine and modern. I'm not quite sure I like the color of the island, but I just didn't think it should be black. It bugged me how our "before" kitchen was so monochromatic and orangey-looking. It needed some contrast and a dark color to anchor it. My husband still wants to install a commercial pull-down spiraly faucet. We are having trouble finding one since the ones we looked at don't seem to pull down that far.