Refacing Oak to White

If you’re keeping up with kitchen remodeling trends, you know that white kitchens are hot. For the owners of this beautiful home in Naperville, the oak kitchen was the one thing that dated the look.

They had granite and new stainless appliances, but the “toast” colored oak cabinets with the cathedral arch just didn’t work anymore.  They briefly considered painting them, but that wouldn’t fix the door style or the “too small” crown molding.

We got together on a Saturday morning and took a look at some different door styles and finishes. They like the simplicity of a Shaker style door, but wanted just a little more detail.  They also considered a glaze on the white cabinets, but decided a door with some grooved “shadow lines” could provide some depth and detail without doing the glaze.

I really like this door style. We also picked a crown molding that had a little more “substance” to it and works perfectly with the door style. Simple, but not plain.

The island, before and after.

The back of the island was the typical ‘oak plywood box’ – I installed simple recessed panel details matching the door style to help give it a great custom feel.
The project took me about 6 1/2 days start to finish. I also replaced all the drawers with hardwood, dovetailed drawers on full-extension slides. The hinges are all concealed, soft close.