We are officially moving on to Phase 2 of the Kitchen Renovation! ICYMI, Phase 1 was all about building new cabinets from scratch. Now that I have these beautiful new cabinets, we can’t keep our old cabinets looking like they do right? Of course not. So, Phase 2 is all about renovating kitchen cabinets on a budget. I kept the cabinet boxes in place, but changed everything else! They’re more beautiful and a lot more functional too!
Let’s talk today about how I upgraded the top cabinets first.
Demoing the Insides of my Kitchen Cabinets
First things first. Demo time! My cabinets were always just ok. I didn’t love the placement of the shelves, and they just felt kind of cheap and yucky. So, I removed everything from the inside and also gave it a really good cleaning!
Removing the old shelves was a bit more difficult than I anticipated. I ended up having to use my multitool to cut through the nails that they were installed with. If you’ve ever had to cut through nails you know that it’s pretty loud and unpleasant. But, eventually, I got them out and I had empty boxes ready for a makeover!
Adjusting the Kitchen Shelves
I find that most kitchen shelves have bad placement! I think they are often way too spaced out, leaving lots of empty room, and for short humans like me, the top shelf is always too high! So, I rearranged the shelf placement based on the items that I wanted to go in them!
I used ¾” plywood, and cut each of the shelves down to size. I also ended up painting everything since the insides of the cabinets are already white so I wanted them to match. Finally, I added a face frame over the shelves using 1x2s to make them look thicker and nicer!
Now, everything is perfectly organized and exactly how I want it for what we use these cabinets for!
Upgrading the Cabinet Doors
My old doors were kind of charming. They were shaker style with beadboard inserts. Unfortunately, they were really low quality. They were very thin and had a lot of dents and scratches on them. Plus, I wanted them to match my other cabinets! If you missed my Four Ways to Make Shaker Cabinet Doors post, make sure to check that out. To build these, I used Option 3 (I hadn’t tried Option 4 yet!) and love how they came out!
So what do you think? Easy enough upgrade right? Next, in my renovating kitchen cabinets on a budget, we’ll be talking about how I converted the lower cabinets to all drawers!
