DIY Kitchen Refresh Part Two

Hey y'all! I hope you had a great weekend! We spent our weekend celebrating Olivia's eighth birthday and finishing up our final kitchen refresh project. Okay, I saw final but I can't say I won't find another kitchen project! If you want to check out part one of our kitchen refresh, go back and read this post. I answered all of your questions about cabinet painting and changing out our recessed lighting above the sink to a pendant light!

Okay, let's start with the before. I said this in my last post but this kitchen has been one of my least favorite rooms because of the cabinet color. The color just made our space look so dark! Well, we totally solved that problem by painting the cabinets. Now, that we have had them painted for a few weeks, it's just so hard to imagine what they actually looked like before. Living with the painted cabinets and using them like normal, I can definitely tell you that the paint we used it great. I have been able to wipe them down and even scrub off a spill with no issue. 

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I love walking into my beautiful white kitchen now! It just really feels like a brand new space. But, there was still one thing I wanted to fix. The material that our bar is constructed out of is just very low quality. It was also just put together really poorly because you could always see the seam where they put the two pieces of material together. My kids always sit there for breakfast + lunch and of course, they are always kicking their feet and bumping into the bar. Well, that seam would literally move and push in... I can't believe that whole thing never just fell apart! For years, I have wanted to do something about it. I had this idea to cover the bar in beadboard probably three or four years ago but I didn't think it would look good with our original cabinet color. After painting the cabinetry white, this seam on the bar bugged me even more since the rest of the space looked so good. 

Friday morning, I shared my design plan with Josh and by that afternoon, he had the supplies to make my vision come to life. Goodbye ugly seam and hello more durable (and beautiful) bar! Josh will tell you that was a very mathematical project and one that I'm glad he did because honestly wouldn't have had the patience to do it myself. He bought two sheets of this beadboard at Lowe's, wood glue, finishing nails, and putty to complete this project. He measured everything out and used a saw to cut the beadboard to fit the space. He attached the beadboard with wood glue and nails then used putty to fill in some gaps. On Sunday, he went back and painted the beadboard with two coats of the same paint we used on the cabinets. 

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I absolutely love how it turned out! It makes the bar look so much better and it's so much more sturdy + durable! We also added the beadboard to the side over by the door as well to complete the transformation. I shared this project on my Instagram Stories yesterday and several people asked me about the missing the outlet at the end of the bar. This was something we went back and forth about but ultimately decided we could live without it. We were going to cut the beadboard to accommodate the outlet but I thought it would give us a much cleaner look without it. For safety, we had to cap the wires in the outlet so that they wouldn't touch each other. We have seven other outlets in our kitchen space so I don't think we will miss this one at all. I'm glad we decided to ditch the outlet! I'm so happy with how our kitchen refresh turned out and we did it all for under $300!

Let me know if you have anymore questions about this project. I'm happy to help!

Thanks so much for visiting! Have a great day!