Sanding and Painting

Before we dive in, I want to give a quick shout-out to my Padre! Today is his birthday! Happy birthday, Padre!!

We celebrated with him yesterday with good food, family time, and a few rounds of Euchre. Hopefully he enjoyed his day today!

This week we continued work on the kitchen island. Feeling a bit of deja vu? Me too! It's the project that just won't finish! But we are closer, I promise.

This week was a ton of sanding, filling, more sanding, sealing, and painting. Whew!

Last week Scott built all the drawer fronts, and this week he completed the cabinet fronts and the box that will hold our trash/recycling.

There are kits you can but to put your trash in a cabinet, but they all fit in 24" (standard base cabinet depth) cabinets. Our cabinets are 21" deep with 18" slides (remember that snafu?), so we needed to make our own.

Scott mounted the drawer slide on the bottom of the cabinet and created a 3 sided box that the trash cans will fit in. The 4th side will actually be the cabinet front. So when you pull open the cabinet, out the trash will slide.

While Scott built the "trash box" (as I'm affectionately calling it), I rough sanded the cabinet fronts with 80 grit to knock down any high spots between the center boards and the rails/stiles, and filled any gaps.

Once the gaps w we re Filled (keep in mind, these are the backs of the drawer fronts, you won't see them, but filling the gaps means there is an even surface to attach to the drawer boxes (and it was super satisfying to see that gap virtually disappear!).

With the gaps filled I sanded with 120, then 220, then used 320 to "knock down" the sharp edges so they feel nice when you touch them.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned thus far is not to skimp on sanding. It makes your project feel "finished" and knowing what I know not, I cringe when I touch some of our older projects that we weren't as meticulous on (lookin' at you, desk 😒).

Once the drawer fronts were sanded we brought them inside to mount them temporarily so they'd go on easier once painted. We labeled the drawers by letters, based on location (A-L), with a piece if tape on the back so even if we paint over it we can peel the tape off and see the letter. You'll see that below.

We used some drawer front clamps recommended by Bourbon Moth that helped hold them in place while Scott put two screws in each front. These are temporary, and we removed them after we had put them all on, but this way we won't be clamping on freshly painted drawers, I can just hold them and Scott can put the screws in the existing holes when we're ready for final assembly.

We took the fronts back off and it was time to paint. We decided to use the small sprayer we bought for painting the trim, so we set up two "paint stations" in the garage (we just covered the work table and a folding table with plastic, and added some scrap wood to keep them from sitting on the plastic, nothing fancy).

We started with the backs and I painted slightly inside of the portion that will be covered by the drawer box. I could have painted the whole thing, but you won't see it and ghe paint is expensive. Peep the tape covering the letters so we know where they go too.

We painted two coats, sanding between coats, on the back and so far two (sanding between) on the front. They won't be dry for another hour or two so we likely won't know until tomorrow evening if they'll need another coat.

The paint we are using is Sherwin Williams Emerald Urethane in Halcyon Green. It came highly recommended for painting cabinets and the salesman said we didn't need to prime. It's a glossy paint that self-levels and if the drawer fronts look half as nice as the cabinet does, I'll be a happy camper!

The color is so hard to discern in photos, but it's a greenish-tealish-blueish depending on the light and I LOVE it. We chose our hardware, it's brushed champagne bronze, keeping with the gold-type tones we have elsewhere.

While we were waiting on a coat of paint to dry yesterday we found some time to seal the drawer boxes. We used linseed oil that we had on hand from the 3-2-1 mix we sealed inside the cabinet with. We could've used the same mix, but chose the linseed oil because it has a nice, non-chemical smell that will be better around kitchen items and it still seals and protects the wood. We just wiped it on with a rag, the wood soaks it up and the grain really pops.

We did try to get the top for the island this weekend, but it was out of stock at Floor & Decor. Luckily, home depot has something similar (better, in our opinion), so we'll hopefully get it this week. We are doing a butcher block top just for the island, the rest of the counters will be stone of some sort, so we are hoping the wind in the island lends some warmth and depth to the kitchen. Wish us luck in getting a top!

The remaining items needing to be done on the island are dwindling, but there are a lot of small "finishing" things (like the toekicks, trim, putting on handles, etc) that will likely take us a while before we can say "done, done!". Still, we are getting closer!