Kitchen makeover, part 2: Progress

After we cleaned up the kitchen as much as humanly possible without completely gutting it, we started painting.

The kitchen is south-west facing, but for some reason it's kind of dark most of the time.  So I chose a white paint (BM Simply White) to lighten up the whole kitchen and to visually purify it of all yuckiness that it previously had.  The walls, ceiling, trims, cabinets, were all painted the same color white.  If I could paint the tiles white, I would.

We finished painting before we moved in November, and until just this weekend, we lived with this "open-shelving" style that is definitely NOT for us (visual clutter leads to literal clutter, and let's be frank that we're not the neatest couple in the world), while T took his time finishing painting the cabinet doors:

Yikes.  I can't believe I'm putting this on the internet.

In the next four months, in between my nagging and complaining about the exposed mess, I shopped around for knobs & pulls and fell in love with this:

Siro Decco knob!

And matching pull handle!

Thankfully the cabinet doors are just plain boards, so they could take any style of knobs and pulls.

And this hinge's clean look goes well with the knobs and pulls, even though the finish isn't quite matching, but it's pretty close:

Discreet enough.

Of course, life would be so uninteresting if it all worked out just so.  After installing the first set of doors, we found out that the hinges prevented the doors from closing completely because of the added width.

Curse you!

So I very reluctantly returned those hinges and bought the generic inset hinges in white, hoping that they would blend in with the paint and not clash with the cute knobs:

Bleh.

Well, at least the doors will close.

 I wasn't too enthusiastic about finishing up the cabinets now, until I found Rockler's salice hinge specifically designed for 3/8" lipped doors!

Hallelujah!

Problem solved!  Invisible hinges, no need to worry about matching the knobs!  Except, they are $25.99 per pair, about 10 times as much as the generic hinges.  I cried a little and cursed a lot.  After about a month of contemplating (how important is it?) and justifying (we saved quite a bit by fixing up the kitchen ourselves), I finally bit the bullet and splurged on the hinges. 

Another couple of months passed.... and without much planning and thinking, I started working on installing the doors.  I marked the hinge locations on the doors and frames:

x marks the spot

 Routed the circles on to the back of the door:

I like this part, makes me feel like a true DIY-er

 Screw the hinges onto the door:

And I like this part too, 'coz it's so easy.

Blindly screw the mounting unit to the frame, using a heavy-ass right-angle drill:

The screws go in toward you, so a right-angle drill is a must.  Eyes optional.

 Then attaching the connector between the mounting and the hinge:

Hand screwdriver is best; I inadvertently snapped off a screw using the power drill.

I did all of that, and I crumbled at the last step, which was clipping the hinge onto the connector.  I mean, seriously.  Just clipping the hinge on.  And I couldn't do it.  It was more difficult than screwing the mounting unit blindly and backward.  Unbelievable.   T had better luck with this step so I made him do it and take a tiny bit of credit for the installation.

Hinges clipped on, finally.

The hinges are completely invisible from outside!

Installed!  16 more doors to go!

It was quite a learning curve.  We spent about an hour per door for the first 3.  After finally getting the hang of it, we were able to move faster with the rest of the doors to complete installing them in two weekend afternoons.  Still, in no way was it as easy as depicted by Rockler's video:

I mean, sure, if I had one of those fancy flexible drills that probably cost too much!!   I'm happy with the result though, and too exhausted to exert further complaints, so I will shut up now.

On to the reveal!