DIY Kitchen Transformation: The New Floor Revealed

Can you see the difference?
Can you see the difference? The vibrant wood grain should be the biggest difference you see, but we also nudged the color a little bit to make it more brown…less yellow/orange in color.

On Thursday and Friday, we had a contractor come in to sand and re-stain our hardwood floors. Jeff from “A Cut Above Hardwood Flooring” was recommended to us by our carpet cleaning guy.

This piece of floor is continuous from the front door to the kitchen, and to access the front door, garage, basement, and staircase, you will step on the hardwood. I’ll discuss how we dealt with that in a minute.

As mentioned before, there were some areas to the floor that had clearly suffered water damage, but had subsequently dried out. The wood was structurally sound, but the sealer and stain color were messed up. It was important to me that those areas get extra attention, and Jeff did that very well.

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DIY Kitchen Transformation: Second Time’s a Charm!

This is after the first coat...I think it's going to be brilliant with the second coat!
This is after the first coat…I think it’s going to be brilliant with the second coat! Compare to the “before” picture.

So…um…yeah…we had the wrong kind of primer the first go-round.

This morning I picked up a can of Zinnser Bullseye 1-2-3 primer and it made a HUGE difference! I was able to sand down the blemishes in the primer job before applying the first coat of paint and it didn’t peel off in two seconds.

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DIY Kitchen Transformation: The Importance of Thorough Prep Work

We had a pretty substantial setback today on our journey to (like) new cabinets. Dave and I had read plenty of DIY tips suggesting that if one’s stained and sealed cabinets are old enough, a simple chemical treatment with a “sander deglosser” is all we would need before applying the primer, then paint. Boy were … Read more