I realized I forgot to explain a few things in Friday’s post. We were working on the kitchen for a while, so I got a little lost on what I’d explained before and in the process skipped over a few few things.

The Cabinets: With the exception of the pantry and open-faced cabinet that I built, the rest of the cabinets are the original dark oak cabinets that were in the house when we moved in. We were lucky that the old cabinet footprint and the new cabinet footprint where just close enough to work out with a few filler boards strategically placed. We removed the cabinet doors and all the hardware when we started. All the wood was wiped down with a liquid sand, primed, and then painted with several thin coats of a semi-gloss cabinet paint. The hardware was wire-brushed down to bare metal on a bench grinder with a wire wheel and repainted – the hinges white and the handles black.

The Chalkboard Cabinet Door: The main pantry door doubles as a chalkboard and is the only door I had to build. The panel of the door is 1/4 plywood that has been painted with chalkboard paint. If you haven’t worked with chalk board paint yet, it’s pretty straight forward. It’s sold just about anywhere you can buy paint and most places now offer a white base that can be tinted – just name the color. If you want to get fancy, there’s also a magnetic chalkboard paint, though the reviews seemed mixed on it.

Trim: I don’t think I mentioned it anywhere, and I can’t find any before photos, but the original wide kitchen trim had been removed and replaced with a standard baseboard sometime in the eighties. Unfortunately, the original trim is long gone. Fortunately, it’s a simple design – a 1 inch board and a piece of quarter-round – and we were able to bring back the original look.

The Stove: No it’s not your eyes, or the lighting, or the photo. The stove’s not white. It’s not tan, either. It falls in the realm of some sort of bisque that looks white against dark brown and yellow against white – it worked with the dark cabinets. When we first moved in, the refrigerator and microwave where that color as well. They both failed within the first 6 months and were replaced with white appliances. (There was no dishwasher until we made the spot to install one shortly after moving in, so it’s always been white.) So that leaves the lone range, in bisque. As long as it works, it stays – and since that’s my stance on it, I’m guessing the thing will never die.