How To Update Old Cabinet Doors With Trim

How can I update my kitchen cabinets without replacing them?

If you're looking to reface, refurbish, or refresh your kitchen cabinets without a major overhaul, this list is for you lot. We've rounded up 10 ways y'all tin can do this with some standard tools, straightforward installations, pre-made kits, and more.

1. Paint Kitchen Cabinets

Your cavelike kitchen feels that way because the night cabinets have sucked all the calorie-free out of the room. Simply a brighter makeover doesn't necessarily mean replacing those gloomy boxes with all-new ones. As long as the frames and doors are structurally sound, you can clean them up and brush on a fresh glaze of paint—and within a weekend have that kitchen from dreary to sunny.

For full step-by-pace instructions, shopping list, and tools list, see How to Paint Kitchen Cabinets.

Here are some different techniques to requite your kitchen cabinets more personality:

Crepitation

Colour changes everything. But colour with a little flair can modify the style of your cabinets from plain and unproblematic to shabby chic, rustic, provincial, or modernistic. Here are a few of our favorite imitation finishes that can spice up your kitchen'south style.

This weathered end comes from a special "crackling glaze" available at paint stores. Apply the glaze over a dry base coat, brushing in but one direction (thick for large cracks and thin for fine cracks). Allow it dry, then finish with a flat superlative coat of the base of operations color, brushed on perpendicular to the coat. The paint will start to form cracks as it dries, a process that takes about an hour.

Distressed

Whether it'southward simply worn or truly beat out upwards, this rustic finish is made up of layered colors and spattered dark pigment (to mimic fly specks). When the paint is dry out, you lot tin can "distress" the stop past striking it with a chain and lightly sanding in the spots where cabinets become the well-nigh employ to reveal the colors underneath.

Antiqued

This provincial look evokes a slowly aged surface. Speed the crumbling procedure by dipping the tips of a paintbrush in a color lighter than the cabinets, dabbing the backlog onto a fabric until the brush is almost dry and lightly grazing the surface of particular trim, corners, or seams.

High Gloss

Not but will a high-gloss finish repel dirty fingerprints better than whatever matte (and it's easier to wipe clean), information technology will also simulate the look of metal or glass in a mod setting. To smoothen up your smooth cabinets, paint a high-gloss clear acrylic varnish over your concluding coat to add together depth and effect a glassy finish

2. Reface Kitchen Cabinets

That sweet former woman you bought your house from is truly wonderful—actually, she is—peculiarly the way she gave out homemade cookies during the holidays. Merely, that kitchen where she baked them—it'southward ugly. What's old may be new again, just those grease-caked, kid-scratched cabinets have to go.

We're not saying you must gut and rebuild. Instead of spending, say, $5,000 on new cabinets, salvage some serious greenbacks and reface the ones you accept for under $1,000. It's amazing what a little veneer and some new doors can practise to brighten an aging space. Both are available through woodworking companies, and some manufactures offer peel-and-stick veneer to make the chore simpler. Merely be certain to measure out twice and cut one time. Work carefully, and your kitchen will look make-new in no time.

For full step-by-footstep instructions, shopping listing, and tools listing, see How to Reface Kitchen Cabinets.

3. Install a Pull-Out Cabinet Shelf

Make the well-nigh of your kitchen'southward existing storage space by installing a pull-out shelf in one—or all—of the base cabinets. The shelf resembles a shallow drawer that glides out for easy admission to items stored in the back of the chiffonier.

Our shelf was built for a standard 24-inch-deep by 33-inch-wide base chiffonier, but its design is adaptable to nearly whatsoever size cabinet. Information technology has a 1x4 pine frame and ¾-inch birch plywood bottom. If you're only edifice one or two shelves, you can save some money by going to a dwelling house center or lumberyard that sells quarter or one-half sheets of plywood. And in most cases, they'll fifty-fifty cut the plywood to your dimensions.

If you've never attempted a woodworking project equally seemingly circuitous equally this i, don't worry. TOH Chief Carpenter Norm Abram created a simplified, straightforward design that can be hands constructed with ordinary tools.

For full step-by-step instructions, shopping list, and tools list, run into How to Install a Pull-Out Cabinet Shelf.

4. Put in Undercabinet Lighting

At that place's a missing element in almost American kitchens, and it's not a $seven,500 range or a four-acre refrigerator. No, it'due south but good lighting. The hidden fixtures of undercabinet task lighting, which are fairly easy to retrofit beneath upper wall cabinets, bathe the countertop in vivid white calorie-free—a boon for everything from dicing veggies to reading recipes.

Connect the fixtures to a dimmer switch, and you also have the key to dramatic emphasis lighting or a night calorie-free for midnight snackers. If you're a bit tentative about working with electricity, don't worry. This installation is simple and shock-complimentary, as long as you lot cut the juice at the breaker box first.

For full pace-by-step instructions, shopping listing, and tools list, encounter How to Install Undercabinet Lighting.

v. Build a Butcher Cake Island

If you're going for homey and cozy in your kitchen, skip the built-in cabinet-base island and instead make the central work area a piece of furniture-like table with a butcher-block counter. Because these thick wood-slab tops accept their border or end grain exposed, they are stronger than wood laid on the apartment. That means they resist warping and nicks ameliorate than laminate and most besides as stone.

Butcher-block islands mimicking 19th-century worktables are perfect for toning downwardly the coldness of stone counters and metal appliances in modern melt spaces. You can bring this classic artful to your kitchen past amalgam a prep island from like shooting fish in a barrel-to-buy materials or choosing one of the dozens of styles available through retailers and furniture makers.

For full step-past-step instructions, shopping listing, and tools list, encounter How to Build a Butcher Block Isle.

6. Build a Sideboard

Dishware, serving pieces, tabular array linens—a sideboard packs a whole lot of storage infinite into a relatively small footprint, making it a handy addition to whatever household. A sturdy, high-quality one tin get out a thousand-dollar dent in your finances, but as TOH general contractor Tom Silva demonstrates, yous can enhance a few stock kitchen base cabinets with molding, article of furniture feet, and knobs to produce a handcrafted piece for a fraction of the price of buying one set-made.

Opt for unfinished 15- or xviii-inch cabinets fitted with doors and operable drawers (not the fake drawer fronts used for sink cabinets) and take a 24-hour interval to put all the pieces together. Your handsome creation will plow heads at dinner parties for years to come.

For total step-by-pace instructions, shopping list, and tools listing, see How to Build a Sideboard from Stock Cabinets.

7. Build a Window Seat

As attractive every bit window seats are, just a few older homes with deep dormers seem to have them. And adding a window seat has ever been considered impractical. First, you demand a niche that features a window. So, the seat has to exist custom-built by a cabinetmaker or trim carpenter to fit the exact width and sill height of the window. Not surprisingly, this approach is expensive and time-consuming.

This simple, do-it-yourself arroyo provides both the "niche" and the window seat, and an affluence of storage space. This seat was built under a 6-human foot-broad kitchen window, just its design can easily be adapted for whatsoever size window in almost any room. The seat is made upwardly of six kitchen wall cabinets and two 48-inch-tall bookcase units, which are trimmed with decorative crown molding. The window seat itself is composed of two xv-inch-tall, over-the-fridge cabinets set side-by-side.

For full footstep-by-step instructions, shopping listing, and tools list, see How to Build a Window Seat.

8. Add a Plate Rack

You could get out your dishes tucked abroad behind closed doors. Or, if they're interesting and vibrant, you could create a place to display them, freeing upward precious storage space and adding a splash of color to your kitchen.

See how to make unproblematic slotted storage from a kit, in Stylish Kitchen Upgrades from DIY Kits.

9. Add together Cabinet Crown Molding

Nothing screams, "I spent lots of coin on custom cabinets!" like crown molding. The trim transforms your kitchen storage into a seamless design.

Make calculation extra personality to your cabinets simpler by mounting molding on a hardwood frame that sits above cabinets. Using a frame allows for doing the detail work on a bench—much easier than from a ladder—then you tin can attach the crown from the back side, so there are no nail holes to fill. In one case the frame and crown are attached, yous install the whole assembly in 1 go.

Encounter how to blast the clever trick, in How to Install Kitchen Chiffonier Crown Molding.

x. Add Storage With More Kitchen Cabinets

When This Old House contractor Tom Silva started his carpentry career over 35 years agone, he often built the kitchen cabinets he installed for his customers. "Back and then, it was even so price-constructive for small shops to build them," he recalls. "Today, manufacturers assemble them faster and more economically than we tin."

The goal is to take this drove of boxes and bring them together to make a beautiful piece of built-in article of furniture. The basic installation sequence is straightforward: Y'all want to get everything straight, plumb, and level. But mostly, the room itself lacks those attributes. Not to worry! Nosotros tin aid you lot get the job done right.

For full footstep-by-step instructions, shopping list, and tools list, encounter How to Hang Kitchen Cabinets.