Kitchen cabinets

[Pinkjenny]

We had our kitchen redone a couple of years ago, and replaced the floor, tiles, worktops and all appliances, but we chose not to replace the kitchen cabinets. The main reason was that they are solid oak cabinets, and we didn't have enough of a budget to replace them with anything other than laminate.

However, they are very dark, and despite changing the handles numerous times, they have never grown on me.

What are my DIY options? I can't just get the doors redone as there are shells also, that can't be removed. Can I just paint them? Would I need to sand them down?

Has anyone embarked on this in their own kitchens?

get them sandblasted, they end up much paler. you have to send them away, some relatives of mine had it done and it looked great

I can't do this because some of them have shells (i.e you can see an expanse of wood on the side of the cabinet) and they can't be removed.

You can get varnish removing products which should make them much paler as well although I have never used them so don't know how reliable they are.

I don't think it matters hugely about seeing some of the carcass - often the carcasses do not match the doors in a coloured kitchen or you could just paint them a neutral shade to blend in better with the new doors.

Painting the doors will look great if you are good at that sort of thing but utterly awful if you're not. Yes, you would need to sand them a bit to give the primer a key to stick to. I would honestly think it is better to pay someone to do this unless you are very sure of your abilities.

You can get end panels that stick/screw on to the end of runs.

We have an oak coloured kitchen, we replaced the doors in white shaker but you can still see the oak carcass and kickboard etc.

Some kitchen cabinets come with decor ends where you actually replace the side of the cabinet with the decor end (ie if the carcass is white and you have a birch kitchen) or they have ends that you stick on over the carcass.

We added a cabinet in our kitchen and bought an end panel. These were from B&Q.

Does this help?