Kitchen Changes

Morning everybody!  Stephen and I have finally recovered from our whirlwind week and are ready to share the trim project I mentioned a few days ago.  I hinted that we were installing crown moulding but we weren’t quite using it in the usual fashion.  Well, we’ve been wanting to make our kitchen cabinets feel a little more substantial lately, so we decided to try improving them with moulding.

Kitchen Before

Our inspiration came from photos like the ones below.  I love kitchens where the cabinets go all the way to the ceiling, so we decided to try to “fake it” with moulding and paint.

 

The first step was installing the crown moulding.  Stephen started by sketching out the corners and measuring the angles we’d need to cut with the miter saw.

Measuring Crown

We used a borrowed nail gun and air compressor to install the first board.

Installing Crown

It turned out to be easiest to install the pieces facing out (towards our dining room) first and to then cut the side pieces to fit.

Left Kitchen Corner

Using a miter saw made this process so much easier than our previous trim projects – remember that time I cut all the trim for Cara’s dining room by hand?  What was I thinking?!

Crown Installation

Stephen did a great job for his first time installing crown moulding, and I filled in the gaps with caulk.

Crown Molding Caulked

We installed crown along the ceiling and a small piece of trim just above the cabinets to hide a few gaps.

Crown and Trim Installed

Next, it was time to paint!  It’s really ridiculous how many cans of paint it took just to add a little trim to our cabinets!

Paint in Kitchen

The first can of paint we opened was primer for the soffit.

Priming Cabinets

Just painting the soffit with primer made such a difference in giving the illusion of height in our kitchen.

Primed Cabinet Tops

I added a few coats of cabinet paint over the next couple days.  Do you think the cabinets are looking taller?

Painted Tops

Quite the difference from before, isn’t it?

Kitchen Before

Of course there’s still touch-up painting to do and we have a few other ideas we might try to improve the look of the kitchen even more, but we’re loving the change so far!

Painted Tops

So did you guess we’d be using the crown moulding in our kitchen?

We’ll be back soon to share a few more tweaks we’re making and the total cost of this project.  Thanks for reading!

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