cabinet painting advise

cainpatch

Hello........
I am brand new to this forum but I am desperate for some ideas/help deciding how to solve my paint dilemma. I am doing a low budget kitchen redo, meaning I am painting my cabinets instead of replacing!! I have decided to paint the upper cabinets antique white and add wooden appliques to "dress them up. My base cabinets are going to be a deep brown. We are tiling my backsplash and countertops. My dilemma is that I have a floore to ceiling cabinet with my wall oven that has one side butting against the countertops with upper and base cabinets .........not the problem, but what do I do with the other side. I have no idea how to paint this to divide my paint colors correctly. Right now this is stained wood.I need advise on how to divide the upper from the bottom since my cabinet houses the oven and has stained wood all around it. Help.......please......

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sdsester

I guess you are going to half to decide what you can you can "trick out" visually with this situation.

Some pictures might help.

cainpatch

These pictures are not great......and you can see how desperately my kitchen needs doing, but you get the gist of my dilemma. All suggestions welcomed!!!

Blondesense

Maybe it would be a good spot for a bulletin board, message board, or some sort of organizer.

cainpatch

I don't think I was clear enough with my question...........since I plan to paint the upper cabinets antique white and the lower ones dark brown, I dont know how to divide this cabinet. You can see cabinet on the sides of the oven so there is not a clear line where the upper meets the lower. The wall side is solid so there is no dividing line there either. I considered painting that entire cabinet brown and then where the uppers beside it meet change to the light color. but I dont know know how that would look. I also thought about adding a think molding on the wall portion but there is not enough room to add it to the front anywhere close to the counter top.

cainpatch

No, it is not vital that I seperate that cabinet into two colors..........just unsure what to do. My husband votes for painting it the brown color. the upper cabinets over the oven would be the only dark cabinets. all other uppers will be the antique white.

klumbsy

I actually think the option above of turning the entire wall into some sort of message center for the family was brilliant. You could chose to cover the entire thing in cork for a pin board, it could be framed out and painted with dry erase or blackboard paint - the options for that are endless. If this is a convenient area in your home for centralized information, I would absolutely agree with that suggestion.

Blondesense

Even if you don't use the entire wall, if you just make it the full width you could paint above and below it to match the corresponding cabinets.

cainpatch

That actually sounds like something I might consider.

tpolk

whire on all will make kitchen feel bigger, then accent upper and lower

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cainpatch

I appreciate all the ideas very much........I am not sure about the message board idea, although I do really like the idea, and I am sure it would initially look great. However as you can see in the photos, the side of the cabinet is very very close to the doorway and it is the door that we use most because it comes in from the garage. Thus everything that comes in enters through that door and I am thinking that our rubbing against it may create issues. And being a stay at home mom, I really have little need to leave messages. So, as yet that is still undecided. As for the face of the cabinet, I am leaning towards painting the whole thing dark brown to match the other lower cabinets since I chose that color to help hide little fingerprints and paw prints of the grandchildren and granddogs. I am hoping that since the entire cabinet is counter deep, painting the upper cabinets dark will appear intentional, as if we wanted to create a focal point. (one can only hope....lol) Again, thanks for the great ideas. I will try to post some after photos when we are done......but please be patient, we are doing most of the work ourselves and it may take a couple of weeks.

gtono

Hi,
Maybe you can paint it the top cabinet color, but glue square trim pieces that are painted the bottom color. like this:
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/vide...247261,00.html

Or, something that might look cool is to put glass tiles on it. A third element, but it can tie in the top and the bottom if you chose the color correctly. It's not too much tile, and it would be more expensive than paint, but might look quite lovely.

cainpatch

Well.......we took a deep breath and just decided to paint that tall cabinet to match the bottom ones. I think it looks great. I actually like the contrast where the other creamy upper cabinets meet the dark brown. We also got the appliques on the doors and again, I am loving them. We havent put the doors back on yet, (hopefully this weekend we can get them up) and I will post pictures when we do. And again when the countertop and backsplash are in. Thanks for all the interest and ideas.

cainpatch

Not done yet, but getting there. Still have to do the countertop and backsplash and install the new cooktop, new exhaust hood, and sink/faucet

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klmeenan

It looks great!
How long did it take to paint it? I am to paint my moms starting tomorrow. Hers are going to be dark and all one color.