We moved into our house about six years ago. For some reason we can’t remember, we decided to buy modern floating stainless address numbers. I can’t even remember if we had a place in mind to put them. We were just excited to be homeowners, and determined to be cool ones.

The front door had a custom address plate, complete with address and street name. It wasn’t our style, but it took us six years (and the realization that the previous homeowners left a gallon of the house paint color behind) to get around to using our “modern” numbers.

Last weekend, I removed the cutesy custom plate, filled the two screw holes, and painted the white spot left behind the same off-white as the house; and this weekend, added the numbers.

I didn’t document the process since it was really so simple. All I’ll say is that I used the masking-tape-on-the-drill-bit trick to make sure I was drilling an inch into the wood, and that I ended up changing the size of the drill bit used from what was recommended. The instructions had me drilling holes bigger than needed, filling them with silicone caulk, putting the numbers on, and letting the caulk cure. I decided I’d just drill holes that were the same size as the anchors and be done with it. The only drawback to this is that, if your drill holes are even sliiiightly off, all your anchors aren’t going to go smoothly into your holes. Luckily, I was pretty darn accurate with my drilling, so I only had to do a little “convincing” to get the numbers where they needed to be.

Here’s the full view:

While I was out there, I decided that the weird green outer door can probably easily be removed. Then a new front door? Definitely a new porch light. *g*

I read that if you use an acrylic primer and paint that was for slick surfaces, it could be done. And that you’d have to top-coat it with a clear acrylic. K. To Home Depot I went for said paint.

I got Behr’s 75 primer and a gloss white Behr acrylic paint. I didn’t buy a clear acrylic, but if I had known at the time, I would have bought the Minwax Polycrylic for it’s non-yellowing properties.

I cleaned and sanded the laminate with a rough-grit sandpaper, then applied the primer the next day. After 4+ hours, I did a fingernail scratch test since we’ve been burned by the wrong primer before (the laminate cabinets in the garage apartment). Much to my dismay, the stuff came off easily and I could peel it off in small sheets. I knew that primer takes a while to bond, but this freaked me out.

The next day it was still scratching off easily, but no longer peeling off. You can see my scratches on the edges. I ended up taking it off (which took about four hours the next day) withe denatured alcohol and a putty knife. Later, after the entire project was finished, I found this in the spec sheet for the primer (NOT on the can!):

†Dry Time: @ 77° & 50% RH
Longer dry time may be required in cooler temperatures
and higher humidity.
†To Touch: 30 min –1 hour
†To Recoat: 2-4 hours
†Full Cure: 2 weeks

Sooo… if I had waited two weeks it would have been bonded? Should one paint over uncured primer, or wait the two weeks, then paint? Mmmph. I’m honestly not sure what that means, but I still think I did the right thing by switching primers since it was still scratching off easily a day later. Lesson: next time, call Behr’s support line and ask.

I got some different primer and paint from Sherwin Williams. The guy promised it would stick to laminate, and that I could bring it back if not. It went on really thin and after several hours and another scratch test, it barely scratched on my test spot. So I did an entire coat the next day.

Oh, the dozens of tiny pieces of tape? Eva loves the rustling sound of plastic, and also to make us angry if she feels she isn’t receiving proper attention, treats, playtime, dinner. I had to reattach my plastic daily and patch the holes.

For the paint, I used the All Surface Oil-Based Enamel in Gloss. I did a coat a day for three days since I was still seeing a couple of brush-strokes in the top corner. The guy at SW said that it would be great for durability.

It’s still a little soft, several days later, but I’m going to give it a few weeks and hope it’s hardened to its enamel potential. I did do three coats of oil-based paint. I’m digging the shine so far.

When I know the paint is completely dry I’ll fix the edges of the sink where the paint looks messy.

We bought the same handles from Ikea that we put in the kitchen when we moved in. They’re slightly thinner, so the one leftover we had went on the big door. You can’t tell unless you know (but now you do).

Here’s the before-and-after:

Next up: A new (not rusty) faucet to go with the shiny sink that I polished up with some Barkeeper’s Friend.

And maybe a wine fridge? Keeping my eyes open for a good deal. There *is* a plug inside that left-most cabinet. It was meant to be!

With everything else in the living room looking pretty nice by this point, I decided I just couldn’t take it any more. I’ve watched my Aunt Jan strip more doors in her beautiful 1920′s bungalow than I can count in my lifetime, so I thought, “Why not!?”

I bought a low-VOC stripping gel, since some of this was going to take place indoors, and went to work. The first door’s paint bubbled up in 20-30 minutes, and scraped off easily. The rest were a lot harder and took several passes with the stripper.

Turns out, there were maybe three layers of paint (at least two white and a grey) and then several layers of stains and varnishes.

You can see from the pictures that after I got the paint and some varnish off, there was still more to go.

I called my mom, who’s also a master refurb-er, to get her opinion on a different method. She didn’t answer, so I called my aunt. It turns out, Mom was at Aunt Jan’s house, so they put me on speaker and we had a tiny conference call re: our cabinets. “Sand them,” was their advice. I groaned, and asked if there wasn’t anything else I could do (a tougher chemical?). They laughed, my uncle chimed in: “Work those triceps!”, and I knew what I had to do.

I sanded, and sanded. Our little electric mouse made it easier, but it still took me a week of here-and-there sanding.

I tried some wood-filler putty that said it was “stainable”, which, turns out, just means you can stain over it, not that it will absorb it and be the color of the stain. So the weird blobs there are still visible later. Oh well. (Yes, we buy cat food and paper towels in bulk.)

Finally, I pre-treated, then did two coats of Minwax Natural Oak Satin.

The hinges were a fun adventure. No one makes an invisible hinge for a 3/8 inset face-frame cabinet. We tried putting some on that were for just a normal 3/8″ overlay, but they didn’t close right. Again, oh well. We put the hinges back on that were there before, since they were at least a polished nickel color.

But then we realized that the biggest door has a 1/2″ rabbet, not 3/8″ like the other two. The hinges that were on were for the 3/8″ rabbet, so that explained why they door never closed flush into the frame. I looked all over for a hinge for that stupid door. I even e-mailed two companies (one local, one national) and got friendly responses from both indicating that I was most likely SOL.

Plan B: Make the rabbet on the non-hinge side wider. Trust me on the logic here. I didn’t want to buy any specialized tools because this was my “on the cheap facelift” of this wet bar. So, I chipped and sawed away for two or three days, and then sanded the edge smooth. While we were putting the hinge on Chris still didn’t believe me that this would work, but it did. So hah.

Before getting the weird door on, and also a paint (Part 2) sneak-preview:

I know — it’s not perfect, but I like it better than the white and I will have to figure out a way to cover up the little wood filler spots.

For quite some time we’ve been tossing around the idea of doing something to make our living room less black and white. We knew we wanted green, since it’s our favorite color and bridges nicely to the backyard. The obvious thing would be to add a pillow or two. Which we did, ordering a needlepoint Jonathan Adler one, but our cat Eva decided she’d sharpen her claws in it. D’oh! Adding a plant would also be a nice touch, but we’re having trouble finding just the right one.

Then it occurred to us, what if we made the top row of our Besta entertainment center cabinets, which are a glossy black, green!

Chris had found a website that sold green removable vinyl and ordered a sample, but we thought it was too bright. I (Christy) had considered a few green things inspired by wall decals: vines that stretched across all the cabinets, tall grasses, maybe an abstract pattern of some sort. Then one day I decided on stripes, and Chris miraculously agreed with me that it was a good idea. Rarely do I suggest something that isn’t shot down immediately.

Chris vetoed what I originally envisioned: a mix of greens and white stripes. Chris said only greens — no whites. So I skipped the gym one day and made a mockup in Photoshop. He loved it. Again, I was floored and pretty darn proud of my rudimentary Photoshop skills.

Green vinyl tape (think electrical tape) seemed like the obvious solution to me. Chris was adamant that it would ruin the surface of the cabinet doors. I stuck a piece across two of the doors, peeled it back off with no residue, and he had to admit that I was right. So we set to work finding some green vinyl tape in the right colors. The original plan was solid tape striping.

When we couldn’t find more than one color of vinyl tape locally, we ordered three colors of the 1/2″ variety from Identitape. They arrived in the mail and we were disappointed. The darkest color didn’t look green from across the room. The lightest color was a little washed out. We were sunk. I even looked into how much it would cost to make custom decals for the cabinets. Ouch.

The next day after lamenting the end of my brilliant idea, I got the tapes and held them next to my mockup. The middle and lightest were almost spot-on for the colors I had. The missing color: a very bright green. So, it was pure luck that we had a sample of the vinyl decal roll in too bright of a green.

We cut a little square out of the sample, put the first few stripes on, and realized it would work. We ordered a big roll of the bright green vinyl and waited.

When the vinyl arrived, we went to work. First we cut the bright green vinyl into squares big enough to fold over the doors, and then cut squares out of each corner for overlap.

Next was the task of sticking them all to the doors. It was a lot harder than we thought to get the vinyl to stick easily to the cabinet doors. Since they’re so slick, I thought the vinyl would slide on like butter. But it did not. It was just sticky enough that it was hard to get off, and didn’t smooth out. The static between the vinyl and the doors seemed to make the vinyl more sticky. Starting was the hardest part, since it would seem fine until you laid it down, and then would look crooked.

The method we finally came up with was to cut a tiny strip of the backing off of the edge where we were starting, line up the rest of the sheet that still had the backing, stick the exposed strip down, then squeegee the vinyl down. The little squeegee that the website sold us was useless on these cabinets. We ended up with the t-square, using it to unstick the backing as it smoothed down the vinyl sheet. It was a trial-and-error process for sure. One that may have made our marriage a little stronger, as do all the ridiculous projects we think up. This part took us two weeknights to finish.

With all the bright green on, we waited until the weekend to tape. This part took us an entire Saturday. (We used the time in the living room to listen to the second half of Tina Fey’s audiobook Bossypants!) We taped one color, all the way across, cutting and re-starting at each door. We used small pieces of tape as width-guides for when we were leaving portions of bright green visible. If you watch the video at the bottom you may notice those tiny green guides showing up here and there. It was a job perfectly suited for my type-A personality.

Chris set up his tripod and took the occasional photograph. By the end, there were enough to string together for a stop-motion video of the striping part! Watch it once to see the stripes, once to see the chairs moving around, and ten times to see Eva…

1. Move from chair to chair
2. Lick the fireplace (on two occasions)
3. Try to nonchalantly eat the t-square on the coffee table
4. Smoosh a bug on the window.

Greening Besta Cabinets – Another IKEA hack from House.0 from Chris Perez on Vimeo.

Chris has been blogging for Apartment Therapy lately – which is why it’s been hard for him to keep up with the House.0 blog and why I’ll probably be writing up the posts on this site for future DIY’s.

He has a new page and site called MetropoChris.com, where he’ll share stories and outtakes from his blogging adventures – that encompass topics on design and technology. It’ll also be the place for fun recipes and other general Austin foodie things we come across.

Stop by and take a look at MetropoChris.com!