Burr Ridge, IL
Don and Marianne were tired of the dark oak cabinetry in their kitchen and wanted to update and brighten the look. Marianne laughed when she told me about her meeting with the “high end” remodeling company.The well-dressed designer sat down with a beautiful, glossy portfolio and explained, “just so we aren’t wasting each others time” that projects such as this one require a budget in the 60-80 thousand dollar range.
Marianne decided not to waste anymore of his time.
Dark oak cabinets before refacing
The floor plan was basically good. In addition, they had upgraded to granite countertops a few years ago and didn’t want to tear them out to install new base cabinets. They briefly considered painting the kitchen cabinets, but decided there were too many drawbacks and were concerned about the long-term durability.
We decided the best solution was to cover the existing oak cabinet farms and sides with solid, factory finished maple and install new maple doors and drawer fronts in a factory finished solid color paint with glaze.
After refacing with solid color maple
There were a few other design challenges, too. They had a small writing desk that looked outdated and only served as a place to dump keys. phones and mail. Marianne wanted a hutch piece instead that could be used as a small serving area and a place to display glassware and china.
I removed the writing desk before installing a new custom made base unit.
The kitchen desk was removed and discarded and I built a custom cabinet in its place. We considered keeping the wall cabinet and just refacing it with taller cabinet doors to cover the open shelving, but decided it was better to just build a new wall cabinet to match the refacing materials we were using everywhere else.
The kitchen desk are was converted into an elegant display/serving area.
Another challenge was the kitchen soffit. There was no way they wanted to turn this into a major renovation by tearing out the soffits and relocating pipes and ducts, so I covered the soffits in matching maple and installed crown and cabinet moldings. I thought the end result looked very elegant. The process of cladding the soffits was a little more difficult than I anticipated because the drywall underneath was not nice and square, but I think the end result was worth it.
After all was finished, Don and Marianne ended up with a high-quality glazed maple kitchen along with some of the custom features they wanted with minimal disruption and at a fraction of the cost the “high end” company quoted.