DIY Farmhouse Cupboard Make-Over

DIY Farmhouse Cupboard Make-Over, Part 1

How we DIY’d our boring cupboards into our dream Farmhouse Style Cupboards on a tight budget.

We’re so excited to share this post!  However, this project ended up becoming way more involved than we expected, and there will be a Part two!  When we first started talking about remodeling several months ago, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the kitchen cabinets.  I adore the farmhouse bead-board style look, and fortunately for me, Adam likes it too!  We spent weeks looking for inspiration (this is one of my favorites – and the cabinets we modeled ours after!) online, and checked out supply costs and dozens of tutorials.

In the end, we thought we were being really tricky and taking a shortcut.  Instead of buying bead-board and building new cabinet doors (sooooo much money!), we decided to cut out the centers of the existing doors, build slats to fill the centers and create the look we wanted.  While this process has saved us a lot of money, it’s been a lot of work!

This first post will be all about the building process, and will be followed a bit later by one about the painting process and how we got the beautiful, “farmhouse” look I wanted!

Here’s where it all started.  (Disclaimer: this is a terrible picture, but the only one I have that really shows the cupboards.  Apparently, I really didn’t like them!)

I wish I’d taken a good picture of the whole kitchen before we did any work on it.  It was all white and boring.  We did some painting and updated the sink fairly quickly, but those cupboard doors.  Yikes.  After three years in this house, I’m so glad to see them go!

When we decided to start our remodel, we knew we’d have to be super cheap about it.  We literally have no extra money.  We scrimp and save and do without a lot, and then we use lots of elbow grease to make up the difference.

Our amazing family members came and helped us out over Thanksgiving break, or we wouldn’t be anywhere near having these finished.  My amazing sister-in-law and mother-in-law spent hours stripping the layers of old acrylic paint from the frames.

Are you ready?

Here’s our process for transforming these amazing cupboard doors:

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Step One:

Remove from hinges and take off door pulls.  Have you ever thought about how many hinges are involved in a kitchen?  This is a project in and of itself.  I’ll be painting the hinges to match the new knobs we bought.  We decided to splurge and buy new knobs in the style I wanted, but there was no way I was going to pay for nearly forty new hinges!

Step Two:

Cut out the centers of the cupboard doors.

Above, you can see the remnants of pencil marks.  Before cutting, we measured and marked exactly where we wanted to cut each door so Adam had a nice straight line to follow.

Here’s where my hubby is pretty much superman.  He can do just about anything with power tools.  After determining how wide we wanted the remaining border to be, we measured and marked the width on all the doors.  Using a circular saw, Adam cut the sides of the centers, then used a multitool with a wood-cutting blade to cut the corners out.  We use a Craftsman Oscillating Multitool similar to this one for a lot of our projects, but if you’re on a super-tight budget, check out this Harbor Freight model.

Step Three:

Inset the inside edge of the door frames.

Using a router with a 3/8 straight plunge bit, he created an inset ledge all the way around from the back of each door.

Step Four:

Strip off the old paint.

There’s my amazing sis-in-law applying the paint remover.

We first applied Aircraft paint remover and let it sit for a little bit, before scraping it off.  Then we applied it again.  Make no mistake, this is a lot of work.  It took hours, but we knew it would make the project look better and last longer if we started with a clean slate.

Step Five:

Cut slats to fill the center.

For the slats, we used two-by-fours and cut them into 3/8^th inch strips.  Buying pre-cut wood for this would have been expensive, so we got creative and used extra two-by-fours we had laying around.  We cut them down to approximate length and then cut into strips along the narrow edge.

Step Six:

Measure and trim slats to fit.

We measured the slats to make sure they were evenly spaced.  This meant that the end slats on many of the doors were slightly narrower or wider than the ones in the center so that they filled the space evenly.

The beauty of farmhouse style is that it doesn’t need to be perfect!  Mistakes, scratches, imperfections, all add to the charm of the farmhouse style.

Step Seven:

Bevel edges of slats, and sand everything down so it’s smooth.

We bought this handy little Craftsman multi-tool that does all sorts of cool things.  It’s my favorite power tool!  I used it to bevel a narrow angled edge onto each slat so that they form a narrow groove where they meet to mimic the beadboard style.

Step Eight:

Glue the slats into place.

Using a good quality wood glue, we glued the slats down into the routed inset edge.

And there you have it!  Part one of our cupboard remodel completed.  All in all, this has been a fun project!  Our out-of-pocket expenses were next to nothing since we had most of the supplies already.  However, even if we did not have most of these items, this is still a pretty inexpensive project to undertake.

It isn’t finished, though!  We are currently working on painting.  We still have to do the glaze to accomplish the antiqued look we’re going for, plus we need to strip and repaint the cabinet frames.  Keep an eye out for Part 2 where we will reveal the finished product!