White Painted Kitchen Cabinets

We have our white painted kitchen cabinets complete just in time for week 4 of the One Room Challenge.  

Rug

Hey friends!  It’s week 4 of the fall One Room Challenge, and I’m sharing our progress on the kitchen makeover we are working on.  If this is your first time checking in on our kitchen makeover, you may want to start here: Week 1,  Week 2, and Week 3.  The first week, I shared our plans for this space, then week 2 is all about the lighting in our kitchen.  For week three I shared our white painted upper cabinets. And this week, I’m sharing the cabinets that are all completely finished!  We also have freshly painted walls and ceiling, and we have begun installing a wooden top on our kitchen island. I’m only sharing a few photos today because I don’t want to give away too much before the big reveal.  And remember, these photos are unstyled progress photos and some of the decor from the before kitchen is still pictured.

You may or may not have seen my previous three ORC makeovers, and if not, you can click through to see my guest/kids bathroom makeover that I completed, my downstairs bathroom makeover that I completed, and my boys bedroom makeover.

If you have not heard of the One Room Challenge (also called ORC), currently in its 14th season, is a widely anticipated biannual event every April and October.  Each round, twenty design bloggers take the challenge and transform a space.  It is hosted by Linda from Calling It Home and Better Homes and Gardens.  Wednesdays is the day for the design bloggers to go live with their progress, and Thursdays is the day for all the guest participants to go live.  You guys will be amazed at these reveals, they are just beyond words good!

If you found me through the ORC Link up, welcome!  I am so happy you are here!  My name is Nicki and I am the blogger behind Sweet Parrish Place.  I love to share our DIY and home decor shenanigans, along with some organization, fashion, travel and other lifestyle types of topics.  Thanks for reading!  

You guys, I am sooooo excited to finally have white painted kitchen cabinets!  I have always wanted white kitchen cabinets, and it has been many years since I have had them.  And the last white kitchen cabinets I had was in a rental home when I was in my 20’s.  So this has been a long time coming!  About 15 years ago, I built a home, and even then I didn’t have white kitchen cabinets because I couldn’t afford them.  I remember being shocked at the time that the white cabinet selections were significantly more expensive than other ones, and I wasn’t able to fit them into my budget, so I went with a very light pickled oak, which was the closest I could get to white within my budget.

Did you know that painting kitchen cabinets is tedious and time consuming work?  I have to admit that I started painting my kitchen cabinets long before this challenge began, because I knew if I didn’t, I would not be able to complete this room within the time frame.  I work a full time job, so I have to fit my DIY projects into my spare time, and so these cabinets were actually finished while I was off work for summer break.  And I saved the rest of the room until the challenge began.  The color I chose for our cabinets is Benjamin Moore’s Simply White.  I will also be painting the trim with this same color.

There is a lot more that goes into painting kitchen cabinets tha just slapping some paint on them.  It is a multi-step project that includes lots of sanding, priming, and 3-4 coats of paint.  And I am planning to do a full tutorial about how I painted my cabinets, after the big reveal.  I got loads of advice on this job from my neighbor, who is a professional painter, so I really believe that I did them the correct way and they will hold up for many years.  So please stay tuned for that tutorial some time after the big reveal.  I am going to try to plan it for the following week.

Below I have a couple of close up shots of the white painted kitchen cabinets with the drawer and cabinet pulls I chose.  I didn’t realize how much dust was on these pulls until I went to edit the photos.  We are in the process of installing a new wooden top to our kitchen island, and we have been sanding for hours.  So there is a fine layer of dust covering my entire kitchen right now.  Sorry about that.  But I am completely smitten with my drawer and cabinet pulls.

Please note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which allows me to make a small commission from your purchase, but your price stays the same.

Cabinet Pull

I partnered with Liberty Hardware for this One Room Challenge, and they provided me with all of my drawer and cabinet pulls, and also my wall plates for my electric and light outlets.  I contacted them, and asked them if they would be willing to provide these things for my ORC project, and they said yes!  So I have the privilege of choosing any hardware I wanted, which was awesome.  I knew I wanted a matte black because I thought it would really pop next to the white cabinets, and I am in love with them!  The drawer pulls are so gorgeous and I think they are a showstopper in this room.  I think they have a vintage vibe, and they just make me so happy!

What I love the most about the cabinet pulls is the size of them.  They are longer than my old cabinet pulls, which meant a little extra work for me and my husband, because I had to fill in the holes from the old hardware and then he drilled new holes for the new hardware.  But the extra work was totally worth it.  If you will remember from week 1,  we had already painted these cabinets once before, and the hardware was smaller, and closer to the cabinetry.  So they started to show wear and the paint chipped off fairly quickly.  I don’t feel like that is going to happen with these pulls because not only are they longer, but they are more hefty.  They stick out away from the cabinet more, and we are able to pull it without even touching the cabinet behind it.  So I am very happy with my selections.

Liberty Hardware was also kind enough to provide my switch and outlet covers for this room, and I chose these wall plates.  Liberty Hardware was amazing to work with and I can’t thank them enough for sponsoring this project for me.

Drawer pull

We had a new back door installed late last fall out of necessity.  I think our old door was from the 1990’s, and it was very drafty and it was also badly dented on the outside.  I was sad to see the old door go because I loved that it was full length glass and allowed tons of light into the room.  But I was unable to find another door just like it for a reasonable price.  Plus, we decided that we wanted a doggie door so that our dog can go out to the back deck whenever he wants to.  So we chose this door you see below.  We never did get around to painting it until now.

I chose to paint it the exact color I had painted my other door, I used the color Broadway by Behr. I have also painted our front door, the door leading to our garage, and our laundry closet doors in this same color.  And I want to use it on all of our doors!  I love the way this color sinks right into the dark of the night, and it never shows dirt.

As you can see below, we also installed the new wooden top on our kitchen island.  In these photos, it hadn’t been treated yet.  We spent all day Saturday sanding it, and I took these photos right before we began sanding.  I have been treating it with a mixture of dark tung oil and citrus solvent from The Real Milk Paint Co.  I will be sharing the finished island next week.

Boxwood wreath | Weather Station

Take a look at the photo below of this space before, and you will see how far we have come!  I am so darn excited about it!  Take note of the island to the right.  That is the exact same island I am working on right now!  This shot above is a good one to show the new wall color we chose.  The color is Benjamin Moore’s Gray Owl, lightened by 50%.  We also used this same color in our living room, our dining room, and our master bath.  But the kitchen walls are a bit lighter because I did have the color lightened by 50%.  You may not know that you can have a color lightened at the store.  All you have to do is tell them to lighten it by whatever percent you want.  Although this color in its original form is fairly light, my main goal in this room is to make it lighter and brighter, so I wanted to lighten it up a bit.  And I am very happy with the new wall color.  It really did brighten up the room so much.

The minute we attached this wood top to the island, I liked it better in this kitchen.  I hated that shiny stainless steel.  It was scratched and it showed every mark.  The thing that surprised me the most about this wooden top was how much it warmed up the space, even to the touch.  leaning on this piece of solid wood and leaning on stainless steel just feels better and more like home.  Isn’t it crazy how sometimes you can make a change in a space, and the way it affects a space is a surprise to even you?  I knew it would change the looks of this room, but I hadn’t thought about how it would change the way the room feels.

After these cabinets were finished, we had a leak in our roof, and it made some water stains in the ceiling over the stove.  So we decided to hire our next door neighbor to paint the ceiling.  Can you believe I have never painted a ceiling before?  And I wasn’t going to start now.  Especially after my cabinets had just been perfectly painted.  I didn’t want to take a chance on messing them up.  So, my neighbor came over one day while we were at work and painted the ceiling, and it was finished and cleaned up by the time we got home.  I’m not glad that our roof was leaking (a new roof is on the horizon), but I am glad for an excuse to have the ceiling painted because it was dirty looking.

These photos of the island are progress photos.  We didn’t add the wood trim to the island until after these photos were taken.  You can see that we made the wooden top larger than the stainless steel top to allow space for wood trim.

Products I used to paint these cabinets:

Sherwin Williams All Surface Enamel Oil Base

Sherwin Williams Pro Classic Interior Water Based Acrylic-Alkyd (mixed in a Benjamin Moore color simply white)

My Favorite Paint Brush

Handy Paint Cup

Handy Paint Pail

Frog Tape

Foam paint roller

Sanding Sponges

Once our cabinets were all sparkly white, our refrigerator really just stuck out like a sore thumb.  Both sides were a shiny, textured black.  So I had the idea to go and choose some peel and stick wallpaper to attach to the sides to make them blend better into our white cabinets.  I ended up deciding on a shiplap wallpaper I found at Target, and you get a peek of it in the photo above.  It was about $35, and it made for a pretty dramatic change in the space for a minimal cost.  I wasn’t sure if it would still be magnetic, but I was pleasantly surprised that it is.  Especially because we are like real human beings who actually put things on the side of our fridge, ha!

To Do List For Kitchen Makeover

• paint cabinets white
• replace cabinet and drawer pulls
• replace lighting over island
• replace over sink lighting
• add new top to existing kitchen island
• paint back door
• add open shelving
• turn two kitchen cabinets into open shelving
• paint ceiling
• paint walls
• replace curtains
• add new accessories and decor
• add Wallpaper to sides of refrigerator
• paint trim

We really don’t have a lot more to do in this space.  Which is good, because next weekend we will be out of town.  So I am going to try my best to get everything finished in this space this coming weekend.  I don’t have a lot left to do. I actually finished the top of the island yesterday evening, and it is gorgeous!  I am in love with it and I can’t wait to share it with you guys next week. I still need to paint the trim, and then I need to give the entire room a good cleaning because there is dust everywhere from the sanding we did on the island.  And then it will be time to style and decorate, which is the most fun of all.  I went shopping for some items for our open shelving last weekend, and I also plan to pull from some other rooms to style everything.  And then it will be ready to photograph for the big reveal, which is coming on November 8.  I hope you will come back and check it out next week and then the big reveal the week after.  I have a feeling this is going to be my favorite ORC space yet!

Before I go, I wanted to mention that I am an Amazon Influencer, and I now have a storefront that is up and running!  You can click here to go to my page.  You will find this smart lock there, along with loads of other things that myself and my family have ordered and love.  I have all sorts of different things linked there, including things that I have already ordered myself and things that are currently on my wish list.

Do you have champagne taste and a tiny budget too? 
 Love fashion, DIY, crafting, all things vintage and thrifty?  Stick with me, I’ve got you covered!

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