Kitchen Cabinet Makeover: Lori Andrews.

Lori Andrews is a Calgary-based interior designer, and a favorite photographer of mine. Also known on Flicker as The 10 Cent Designer, Lori's beautiful, and often humorous, photography is admired by literally millions of flickerettes everywhere, including the infamous 'Stand on a Bench' Monday pool. Today, Lori is going to share her amazing kitchen cabinet makeover. Simply stunning!

Here a couple of "before" pics:

I like things done a certain way. When I bought my house it was completely trimmed in MDF (medium-density fiberboard) and even the kitchen cupboards were made of MDF. We liked the warmth but were continually frustrated by the poor finish that the previous owner had applied. My husband and I looked into purchasing all new custom cabinets but we had a very difficult time justifying it since the existing items were new and only had decorative flaws. We discussed painting them in a super glossy white and decided that would be our direction. someday...Well someday finally came!

I hired my favorite painter to paint out all of the wood trim in the house. That included the baseboards, the window casings, the base of the kitchen cabinets, some closets etc. It took him 4 coats and 8 full days to do this! Next, my husband and I researched what paint to use in order to get the super smooth, super hard , super glossy finish we wanted on the cabinet doors. After much debate we chose to go with a product that would do the job the best, and last the longest. Because I wanted an extremely durable surface that would not require repainting within the next decade, we chose a lacquer from Becker, who then matched the lacquer to our paint color for us - Benjamin Moore's, Oxford White. I looked at some water based products but they simply could not give the same quality of surface that we wanted.

The cabinets required a great deal of surface prep and my husband had to build special drying racks to stack them all (the cabinet fronts) out in our garage. He also had to rebuild several parts of the cabinetry that were not made of MDF. The microwave stand is one of the items he rebuilt. It is much smaller than the original, so we also had to buy a new microwave! He used a very powerful compression sprayer to apply the three coat paint system. We estimate it took nearly 40 hours to complete the cabinet fronts.


We loved our home before but now it is even better! My kitchen is easy to clean and my new white on white scheme just glows.

'Stand on a Bench' Monday in my home.

*Editor's note: Have you got a great makeover story? Send it my way!