One Room Challenge Week Five: Cabinet Doors are on!

It’s the second-to-last week of the One Room Challenge and now that all the shiplap is finished, things have really picked up!

One thing that got checked off the list this past week was the completion of the window trim. We had trimmed out each window with a 1×4 and Justin then ripped a board into 1/2 inch strips and nailed it around the edges. This helped hide any gaps left in between the shiplap and the 1×4 and gave everything a nice, finished look.

Other than that, the biggest change that has happened this week has been the addition of our cabinet doors!

When we first started planning out the built-ins, we contemplated DIYing cabinet doors. I’m so glad that we ultimately decided to outsource that project because these Semihandmade door and drawer fronts are perfect and were a breeze to paint and install!

Semihandmade is a company that makes different styles of door and drawer fronts that are fit to the same specifications as an Ikea cabinet door. This means you can purchase the Ikea base cabinet, which is a very inexpensive, and then add different doors to create a more custom look. I’m really impressed with how it elevates the look of the cabinets without breaking the bank!

You can order doors in various colors but I went for the unpainted DIY version so I could paint them the exact same color as the rest of the built-in: Treron by Farrow and Ball that I color-matched at Lowe’s. Before painting, I did rub a fresh tack cloth over the fronts and backs of all the doors, because they shipped from the factory covered in a fine layer of sawdust.

I placed each door face down on top of paint cans (so they would be elevated off the ground) and started painting all the backs. I highly, highly recommend painting the backs first so that when you flip them to paint the other side, the back is the painted side that touches the paint cans – if one side is going to get nicked or scratched or stuck after painting, you definitely want it to be the side that rarely gets seen!

(Apologies for the quality and angles of these pictures – I didn’t take photos of this process so these are just screen grabs from the timelapse videos I posted on Instagram).

I used a paint + primer so I did not do a separate layer of primer. I used an angled brush to trim out the edges of each inset . . .

. . . and then I used this six inch foam roller on the rest of the doors to create a really smooth finish.

I painted all the backs of the doors, waited about 3 hours, and then painted a second coat. I let them dry overnight and then flipped them over to paint the fronts. I did the exact same process of two coats, this time also rolling the door sides, and let them dry again overnight. The next morning (probably about 18 hours later), we attached them to the cabinets using the hardware we bought from Ikea. They were very simple to install!

Yesterday, I spent time in the afternoon playing around with arranging the shelves. I’m definitely not done with them, but it was fun to get started with different placements. As you can see, we still need to finish assembling the drawers in the middle, but so far, I’m really pleased with the look!

Other things we need to accomplish this week:

-add the final trim pieces around the door frame

-add thin piece of trim between cabinets and the wall

-paint + install crown molding

-paint + install baseboards

-install cabinet hardware

-paint countertop (while I like the natural wood look, up close it looks silly because we had to use two boards to achieve the length and it’s just too obvious to leave natural)

-paint outlet covers and duct vent to match wall color

-paint the inside of the window frames

-install curtain rod + hang curtains

-move in the rugs, desk, chair, and finishing touches!

Can we get all this done in one week? We’ll see! In the meantime, you can check out all the other guest participants in the One Room Challenge here.