The Kitchen...dun dun dun

Oh the kitchen and it's 90's fabulous golden oak cabinets. The beautiful border and cream hardware. One word: yuck! We kept waiting and delaying starting on it, we had finished all the major projects, except for the kitchen.

Yikes!!  It was soo bad!  I really wanted it done, but I was dreading painting the cabinets.  Replacing them was wayyy out of the budget.  I really wanted a grey green color on the cabinets

But Sissy wasn't diggin' it and to be honest it didn't really go with the rest of the house. We had settled on grey bottom cabinets and white on the top.  So we bought the paint and then proceeded to leave it in the closet for the next 6 months.  Sis went on a road trip to Idaho, so out of boredom I decided to just go for it.
 Since we have oak cabinets we needed to use something to help fill the grain. My Dad happened to have a bucket of Sherwin Williams Natural Filler, so we used that.  I just painted on a thin layer, let it dry, and then sanded like a mad woman. If you have an open grain wood this really is an important step. The grain was very visible without the filler.

 After the filler, comes the primer. I rolled on 2 coats on oil based Zinsers. Then you sand. We rolled on 3-4 coats of Snowbound. This process took FOR.E.VER. Paint the front let it dry, flip paint the back let it dry, and over and over and over again. Sounding like fun yet?
 I sanded them again really well and took them to my dad for the final coat. He sprayed on the final coat and then I covered them with a thin coat of polyacrylic. and tada we have white cabinets!
I did the uppers first to see what we thought and how the painting would work.  I decided the kitchen needed a little warmth so I decided to attempt restaining the wood on the bottom cabinets.

The restaining was definitely way easier than painting.  Apparently this whole process traumatized me so much that I didn't even take pictures.  But here's an in between shot to hold you over!

It's already so much better!