Lady Ren-Ovation

I am an amateur do-it-yourselfer. Growing up my parents always hired people and at one point in time the house was ‘under’ renovations for two years (bad contractor story).

The first place Dr. J and I owned was our condo in St. Martin and the moment we moved in I started ‘getting things done’. The thing about living in the Caribbean is that there is a plethora of people to hire for anything and everything. Seriously you are doing a disservice if you don’t hire help- that is certainly what I told myself to justify my daily maid and nanny. Over the course of many years of studying Feng Shui the concept of doing things for yourself around your home, mindfully, has ingrained itself into my ideas and given me (a sometimes false) determination.

I love the house we live in right now. When we first moved in I hired a bunch of people to do things but we also taught ourselves fix and redo- thanks in part to U Tube and Wiki-how-to!

For the last two years I have been BEGGING Dr. J to redo the kitchen cabinets. They were in near perfect condition just not the color I wished they were. Because Dr. J is THE BEST husband in the world (or is it because I am THE BEST nagger in the world) we just finished the biggest home renovation project we have ever done.

This is what our cabinets looked like prior to our kitchen makeover-

Keeping in mind that I wanted to be mindful in the process, I used natural environmentally conscious cleaning products and recycled rags. We washed all the cabinets and removed the hinges and hardware carving corresponding numbers under the hinge of every drawer and cabinet.

We then sanded the cabinets and rewashed them.

Sanding the frames in the kitchen was probably the biggest pain but with lots of prep we were able to keep the dust mostly in the kitchen.

We then put two coats of primer, on both sides of the cabinets which of course involved drying them thoroughly before flipping.

And primer on the frames.

Choosing the color was no small feat. I likened it to choosing my second monkeys name. We were well into the project before we chose- In the case of naming, we were well out of the hospital before we chose.

We applied two coats on the cabinets and frames and let everything rest for two days- (Actually Dr. J left for two days for a bachelor party on the Las Vegas Strip- Congrats B and A).

Drilling the cabinets back on was much less painful than I had anticipated. With the numbers easy to coordinate and no screws missing, we were done in no time.

We could not be happier with the final result. I have my dream kitchen and all it took was some sweat, dust and a few buckets of paint.

Please check out all these wonderful Party Links that I linked to- Thank you so much to all the hosts!