Kitchen Cabinet Refresh

I hope you all are enjoying the holiday weekend and getting lots done—even if it's just lots of relaxing!

I've been keeping busy lately: I took the doors off the cabinets flanking the stove exhaust.

You may remember I was mulling the idea recently. It seemed like a simple enough thing to do, so I just jumped in. Of course, it wasn't just a matter of taking down the doors and putting in some tchotchkes.

The cabinets are custom built, but they aren't finished inside. A wire from the light above the sink runs through the back of one of them, and they all needed to be painted inside.

Here's what it looked like before:

See, they are tiny—I wasn't exaggerating!

I wanted to create a false back to cover the wire, so I cut out pieces of cardboard and painted them white.

I waited overnight for the paint to dry (the hardest part!), then moved in some colorful items I like having on display, including some dessert dishes, a recipe card file, and a soup and sandwich plate set that I love but never get to use because it's stored up on a top shelf.

Here's how it came out:

And Mr. Chow had to inspect my work:

I haven't filled in the holes from the hinges yet—I just painted over them for now. We're not sure we love it. Erik said that rather than looking like open shelving, it just looks like we took the doors off the cabinets, and I tend to agree with him. He suggested putting glass insets in the doors (little did he know that would mean work for him!), so we're going to try to find someone we know who has the right tools to cut out the center of the cabinets.

I'm also hoping to have some more work done in the kitchen this spring—new countertops (except the island), new backsplash, different lighting—so we might be able to get glass put in the doors then.

Stay tuned—I'll let you know how it turns out.