Tag: diy


Apr
2024

Restoring Peeling Thermofoil Kitchen Cabinets

categories: Renovation

Anyone else have peeling kitchen cabinets? I used to love our white cabinets and how easy they were to wipe off, but now that they are peeling they are the bane of my existence. One thing with house renovations is that once you think about updating one thing it cascades into a bunch of other things and before you know it you’ve spent a gazillion dollars. Because of our peeling kitchen cabinets, we haven’t been able to replace our flooring, countertops, backsplash since we didn’t know if we would have to fully replace the cabinets and that might change the kitchen footprint. It has basically held up all of our house renovations, so now we have decided we are going to completely peel the thermofoil off and paint them.

Our main goal for our house is to not have any eye sores and these peeling cabinets were eye sores. We aren’t trying to necessarily have an HGTV house just functional house with no eye sores because we have three kids and they are about to go to college. :-p Now, when we have a rental house that generates income that is a different story and HGTV is the goal so that’s fun to get to play around there, but for myself I don’t feel like I need all of that. If by doing our little hacks, our house looks a little more HGTV, well then I’m not going to complain or anything.

So as a quick and potential long term fix if it goes well, we took off and painted the 2 cabinet doors that were peeling. We don’t have much time, in general, with 3 kids. so we figure we’ll fix them as they peel 🙂 Here are the steps we followed:

1.) Buy the paint and supplies (see supply list section). We took an existing door to Home Depot to get a color match. We bought special cabinet paint in this color. I think it’s important to buy cabinet paint because it’s somewhat self-leveling. You could even splurge and get the Benjamin Moore – Advance for cabinets. or Sherwin Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel. I read those are the best but then got in a rush and forgot about it because I was already at Home Depot and I got Behr Cabinet paint which worked out fine.

2.) Prep work: We took both cabinet doors off as well as the handles. We covered our ping pong table in the garage with a paint cloth and setup all our supplies. This was the perfect place to do the painting (height and everything).

3.) Remove the thermofoil completely with a heat gun. I highly recommend buying a heat gun for this because the thermofoil comes off much better so you can avoid messing up the wood underneath. We set the heat gun at 500 degrees and the thermofoil removed very easily and cleanly. I wore some gloves because I was scared to get burned. We even used the heat gun to speed up the paint drying process, but we set it at a lower temp and held it further away. This allowed us to finish the job quicker.

4.) Sand and prep the cabinet doors. After removing the thermofoil fully, you can use denatured alcohol to remove the glue residue. We didn’t do that part, we just sanded the doors with 120-grit sandpaper (wear goggles, and mask b/c you don’t want this stuff to get in your eyes and nose), then 220-grit sandpaper. If you have any indentations in the wood, you can use wood putty to fill those in before painting. We didn’t have any because the heat gun at the right setting and some patience (don’t drink coffee before this process :-p) allowed us to remove the thermofoil very cleanly. Use a tack cloth or vacuum to remove the debris after sanding.

5.) Prime the doors with the Kils3 primer (2 coats). Put your first coat, then let it dry and sand again. Do this twice (total of 2 coats of primer) – sanding after each time. The sanding is important – it really gives it that smooth feel you want for your kitchen cabinets. You don’t have to sand after the final coat. We used a paint brush for the intricate parts of the door and a roller for the flat parts.

6.) After thoroughly priming, you are ready to apply the paint color (3 coats). The paint we got had a satin finish because it will be easier to clean than eggshell and that is what our current finish is so we wanted the best match for that as well. Some people prefer semi-glass for kitchens – that’s probably what I would’ve gotten if I wasn’t trying to match our existing doors. We did 3 coats of the color – sanding after each one, except the final one. For the final coat, we did it with the paintbrush only because we felt that had a better finish. I guess if you got the right roller, maybe that would give you the right finish. We had a foam roller and it was leaving an impression – don’t use a foam roller – use a short nap one.

7.) Once dried – you may have to wait several days depending on the type of paint you purchased (check the cure time), you are ready to put the handles back on and put the doors in place!

We are very happy with the final product. The paint match we got from Home Depot wasn’t perfect but it was close enough – for white kitchen cabinet doors it’s hard to tell the difference. I don’t think any of our company will be looking close enough to tell the difference (if they are, then they won’t be invited back j/k) and it looks so much better than having white cabinets with the brown underneath showing in chunks. I feel confident enough now that we can one day get new backsplash and countertops with this fix (once we get over the price shock of those things – as I mentioned our 3 kids are heading to college one after another :-p). We will just continue to do the rest of the doors and drawers as they start peeling as well – in my opinion it’s so much easier to do it as they peel rather than all at once. We were able to save ourselves like $15,000 – not sure how much kitchen cabinets run these days with inflation. I didn’t even bother to get a quote because I didn’t want to faint or waste anyone’s time.

Supply List:

  • Face Mask
  • Work gloves
  • Cabinet paint
  • Kilz 3 primer
  • Paint brush
  • Paint roller – short nap mini roller
  • Tack cloth to wipe off the sanding debris
  • Heat gun
  • Goggles

Pictures of the process:


Jul
2017

Yarn Wreaths

categories: Home Decor, Kids

 As I was looking up how to make a pine cone wreath, I saw this cute idea for a yarn wreath. I like to do crafts with my girls. Well, scratch that. I like to do crafts and my girls like to do crafts so I try to find stuff we can do together. There’s usually some drama but more fun than drama. But so it goes with any family together time. :-p It’s fun with a tinge of drama – as long as none of us takes the cake with the drama then we are good.

What you will need:
Styrofoam wreath (we bought ours at Joann’s) – Or you can duct tape 2 pool noodles together..
Felt to coordinate with the yarn colors (for the rosettes – we bought ours at Joann’s)
Yarn (assorted colors – we chose a max of 2 colors per wreath because it can get tangly – one would be even easier)
Pins (for the rosettes)
Spray glue
Good scissors
Stapler

To make the wreath:

1.) To start, we stapled the yarn to the wreath with three staples, then used the spray glue and sprayed the wreath in that beginning spot (just a little section) and wrapped around a few times – this made it extra secure.

2.) Every time you wrap around, you have to put the balls of yarn through the wreath which ended up being hard with my little one’s wreath because she picked such a small wreath but she insisted the smallest kid has to have the smallest wreath – lol.

3.) Then just keep wrapping the yarn around and spraying the spray glue every once in a while to make it extra secure.

4.) I wrapped the yarn around the wreath twice to make sure all the white was covered.  One of my daughters wrapped once and the other wrapped haphazardly so who knows how many times she went around. They all turned out fine. Once you get to the end tie a knot in the yarn and you are done with the wrapping of the wreath.

Time to make the rosettes or whatever you want to call them.  I tried to find pre-made felt creations at the store that I could just glue on, but I didn’t find anything that I liked and the girls kept wanting to buy poop emoji  and other ridiculous (sandwiches, hot dogs, etc) stuff which I thought would ruin their wreath so I abandoned that idea and told them we were just going to make our own things to glue on.  Luckily, I found this site that taught me how to make rosettes and also luckily the girls didn’t have any ideas to make poop emojis out of felt – dodged a bullet there.  I like to roll the R when I say rosettes – try it it’s fun.  I nicknamed my little one Rosa for the day because she was a rosette making beast.

To make the rosettes:

1.) Trace a circle onto the felt using whatever you can find.  I used a peanut butter jar that had about a 4 inch diameter, a coaster with a 3 inch diameter and also a circle from our Twister game which was the largest – about 6 inch diameter.  We traced all of these on the different colored felt then cut them out.

2.) Next, cut a spiral out of the circle (make a snake).  That’s not confusing at all, right?  Here’s a picture (as you can tell, you don’t even have to be great at cutting):

3.) Then, roll up the snake into a rosette starting with the tail of the snake.  Here’s a picture (I always wanted to be a hand model):

4.) Last, put a pin through the rosette to hold it together, then hot glue it to the wreath wherever you want it.

One thing to be careful of when making the wreath is to make sure that you don’t have too much line of yarn because it will get tangled very easily. I did have to get out quite a few tangles, but it wasn’t so bad because we were doing all of this while watching TV so we were sufficiently entertained/distracted. I prefer to be distracted when doing crafts because it calms me – music or TV. I also like to have something called Sleepytime Tea which also calms the nerves or at least that’s what the package says – that’s enough to convince me. The stocker at Wal-mart got a real good laugh when I asked him what aisle the sleepytime tea was in (he asked me what kind of tea I was looking for – should’ve made something else up)..

My 9 and 8 year old did theirs all by themselves. They used different strategies to get them done but both look great. My 5 year old couldn’t do the wreath but she did make all her rosettes by herself which completely blew my mind b/c cutting the felt is rather tedious. My 8 year old agreed to make my 5 year old’s wreath for her as long as I promised to let her use the glue gun. I was really nervous that she was going to burn half her face off but it worked out fine. You just have to keep your expectations low like I do. :-p My 8 year old actually glued most of the rosettes on all the wreaths except mine (because I didn’t want to freak out if she messed mine up). And she did better than I probably would’ve done.

We all did ours our own way. My oldest wrapped the yarn haphazardly. She wasn’t able to cover all the white of the styrofoam wreath this way, but it still looks great I think and she got done way quicker than the rest of us. My 8 year old meticulously did hers to cover all the white on the first wrap around because she did NOT want to have to wrap it around again. I wrapped mine around twice in order to cover all the white and I didn’t worry too much about having mine twisted I didn’t mind it being a bit messy or mummy-like.

Cara (my 8 year old) made up this saying we used whenever anyone critiqued any of our wreaths while we were working: “I tried and I tried and all you want to do is blame me.” But you have to say it in kind of a drawn out Minnie Mouse accent type of voice and really drag every syllable out. Here’s a link to Cara’s voice: Voice_170713_1[1]  This had us cracking up the whole time. Once, I got annoyed with Cara because she really tangled up her yarn (and I was of course the designated detangler) and she said this and had us cracking up so the rest of us used it too. This came in handy to break up the intensity of crafting.  So, I say to Sydney after an hour of her making her wreath that I’m not so sure about her strategy because the white will still be showing, etc.  She says, “I tried and I tried…”  LOL.

I used this website as my guide for the wreath: http://millionmoments.net/2013/01/how-to-make-yarn-wreath.html

And this website as my guide for the rosettes: http://millionmoments.net/2013/09/make-felt-flowers-rosettes.html

Here’s a pic of the kids all hard at work:


Jun
2017

Pine Cone Wreath

categories: Home Decor

I can’t really decide if this one is a Pinterest win or fail.  I’m still thinking about it.  I’ll let you decide.  The wreath I bought was falling apart and had faded after having it up for 6 years straight so I pulled all the berries off and was left with the wreath skeleton.  Which, when my husband saw it without the berries – he’s like, “Great!  We can just put that up!”.  Lol!

I had some pine cones left over from when I bought some cinnamon scented pine cones from Michael’s like 20 years ago – lol.  They had obviously lost their scent and had gathered so much dust.  They were perfect.  Also, I had my girls collect pine cones from the park as well.  So we had plenty.  I was trying to use stuff I already had or that was free.  I seriously considered making one out of all the kid’s mismatched socks, but thought better of it.  One day I’m going to figure out a use for those.

I cut the pine cones with a tree trimmer like tool.   Or is it a bush trimmer?  I have no idea – found it in the garage.  I guess you can tell I haven’t done any yard work.  Here’s a picture of it:

I actually thought I could use tin snips at first but no way.  These things are hard to cut – you need something heavy duty.  And some of the cuts aren’t going to go well so plan for that.  Then, I put them in a box and spray painted them red – actually this color from Home Depot.  I love red (it’s apple red):

I wanted to do multi-color but I didn’t feel like buying more paint so it’s all red which worked out because then I could just slop them on there however I wanted.  I hot-glued them on there – seems to be going pretty well so far.  We’ll have to see if they start falling off.

However, I think I could’ve spaced them out a little better – it looks like it has ears.  Maybe I’ll add a few more filler pine cones at a later date, but I ran out of spray paint because I used half of it for something else so for now this is going to have to be good enough!

I think it looks especially good from afar – at least that’s what I think.  Or maybe the Home Owner’s Association is going to write in the bylaws – no DIY wreaths – because of my creation.  We shall see.  Lol.

UPDATE: This ended up being a massive Pinterest fail. The pine cones kept falling off (I guess the hot glue wasn’t a good idea for summer time – it just melted and the cones kept falling off). I was too irritated with it to try to fix it that I just tossed it in the garbage. 🙁

Here’s a close up:


Jul
2016

How to Seal Grout on a Tile Floor

categories: Renovation

Here’s what you’ll need:
20160726_182044

First, scrub the grout thoroughly with a grout scrub brush (seen in picture) and water.  I actually use a water/oxi-clean solution to brighten the grout a bit (let the mixture sit on the grout for a little while to brighten it then scrub), but you could also use baking soda.  Make sure to wash off afterwards. Then, let dry for at least 24 hours.

Then, pour some sealer into the Grout Sealer Roller Applicator and roll on the grout.  I had to gently squeeze the bottle a little at times b/c I couldn’t tell if the stuff was coming out or to get a little more to come out, but it worked really well and the sealer stayed mostly between the lines.  If it gets on the tile, just wipe it off with a damp rag.  Let dry as per directions on the bottle.

Hopefully, this sealer will help keep the grout from getting stained.  We shall see.

 


Jun
2016

Old Smokey: Removing the smoke smell from an apartment

categories: Renovation

One of our tenants smoked inside the apartment.  So disappointing.  It is so much work to get rid of that smell.  And I have been blessed with the nose of a hound dog.  I can smell the tiniest smells which is both a good and bad thing as you can imagine.  My sense of taste is great though and I like that part.  They must’ve smoked for the entire 4 years they lived there because the smell is pretty bad and the walls/ceilings were yellowish. 🙁  So, I’ve been busting my tail on this and here’s what I’ve done so far:

Cleaned the Walls:

Washed the walls and ceilings with this solution: 1 gallon warm water, 1 cup ammonia, 1/2 cup vinegar, 1/2 cup baking soda.  No, it won’t fizzle over – that’s what my husband thought would happen – no fizzling volcano.  I just used a rag and dipped it in the bucket, rang it out and wiped the walls the best I could.  Then, used a damp rag (with just water) to wipe that off and then a towel to dry.  I’m not going to lie – it’s a lot of work.  For the ceilings, I bought a flip mop at Wal-Mart (it’s like a flat head mop that flips so you can use both sides) and sprayed the solution on one side and plain water on the other, then mopped the ceilings.  You’ll want to wipe anything that would absorb this smell – even cabinets, etc.  Luckily, we are planning to gut the kitchen so that’s not a problem for us.

Painted with an Oil-Based Primer:

Next, I bought a bunch of cans of Pro Block oil-based primer from Sherwin Williams.  It’s my first time going to Sherwin Williams – I actually embarrassed myself the other day when I told someone I went to Sherman Williams (that’s actually alot easier to say – they should change their name).  :-p  I usually buy my paint at Home Depot or Lowe’s – it’s just less expensive.  In this case, though, I wanted something heavy duty and the best so that’s where I went.

I basically painted the entire 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment with this stuff – walls and ceilings – again, lot of work and boy does it stink.  I did use a respirator for some of this – in the smaller rooms, it was unbearable.  I put a box fan in the window to air it out.  You’ll also want to make sure you protect your arms, and hair.  I got some paint freckles on my arms that aren’t coming off – instead of sun freckles this summer, I am getting paint freckles. :-p

They say that the smell will go away once dried but it really doesn’t – it just morphs into a different smell.  I suppose once I get the top coat on, it will go away – I hope. Be sure to let it dry for a few days before putting a layer of paint on top of it or you could trap that smell in the place.  UPDATE:  the smell is going away slowly but surely.  I just make sure to open all windows whenever I’m there and use fans.

Also, made the mistake of putting the roller in the fridge so I can reuse it – never do this, but see this post if you did: How to remove smell from Fridge

 

Replace Flooring:

We’re also planning to replace ALL the flooring – luckily, we were planning to do this anyway so this isn’t an extra expense.  If you have carpet, I don’t think this smell will come out, unfortunately.  Someone with a nose like me would be able to smell it.

Room Shocker:

I also read about something called Room Shocker which I have bought through Home Depot online for the bathrooms because the bathrooms have been recently gutted (3 months ago) and remodeled and then they smoked heavily in there so they are ruined smell-wise.  I’m hoping not to have to repaint those (since they were just painted) and just use the Room Shocker.  I will update when I actually get a chance to use it and let you know how it worked..

Pray:

Don’t forget to pray – this smell is hard to get rid of. :-p

Well, I think that’s all for now.  I will have to check back here and update you if this all worked.  We are still in the process of renovating and will be done in January sometime.  Will let you know.

UPDATE: All of this worked to get rid of the smell.  It’s like a brand new place.