After lots of interruptions and diversions my kitchen rehab is essentially done. I built the original kitchen about 25 years ago. It looked like this:
Maple veneer plywood with solid maple stiles for the doors and drawer fronts, ceramic tile floor. The floor tile had several cracks and the maple veneer was split and puckered just about everywhere. But most of all I was just tired of brown. So now it looks like this:
I changed the floor to bamboo, hated it, so I tore it out and installed Pergo laminate which goes better color wise (my bad on the bamboo choice) and is far easier to keep clean. The bamboo showed every speak of dust and cat paw tracks, and was impossible to spot clean w/o leaving a ring. The window frames got the red treatment, too, which was a bit of an undertaking but the natural pine stuck out like a sore thumb so it had to go. The door and drawer fronts are shop sawn ash veneer over composite plywood, with solid ash stiles. I reused the maple moldings by stripping and sanding them and then finished them to match the new look. The red finish was a cocktail of Transtint dyes in Sealcoat shellac followed by GF Enduro Clear Poly Satin topcoats. The gray on the cabinets is Lenmar's Duralaq custom tinted at my local BM; two coats of that followed by a coat of Enduro Clear Poly for improved durability. The darker gray on the toe kicks and fridge is BM Advance.
At the other end of the kitchen I made a new passage door to the basement, using the same style as the cabinet doors.
It replaces the hollow core oak door that was there. Same thing for the pocket door to the half bath only that one is white. The door to the attached garage still needs to be changed, so that's why I said the project "almost done".
The other end of the kitchen was originally intended to be a breakfast area, but quickly morphed into a computer work space. We decided there was plenty of red in the rest of the kitchen so it's basic white with the gray carried over from the fridge and basement doors.
The chairs need some updating and the sliding door needs to be painted to get rid of the natural pine, too; another "almost done". The white doors and drawer fronts are PliumaPly (great stuff) with maple stiles, finished with Duralaq white pigmented lacquer tinted by BM to SW's ProClassic white. Strange, huh, why not just use ProClassic? Because ProClassic doesn't spray anywhere near as nice as Duralaq with my equipment. That big pantry cabinet on the left is the original; no way I could take it out to change/refinish that exposed side. So I finished it in place with ProClassic thinned with water and Extender, applied with a foam roller and it came out very nice. The toe kicks and molding are ProClassic, too. The color match with the Duralaq is perfect to my eyes.
I guess it took about 18 months start to finish with lots of interruptions from other projects.
John