How to Paint Laminate Kitchen Cabinets!

Cabinets AFTER being painted Dulux Misty Moore

Cream Laminate Cabinets BEFORE

We recently did a mini renovation on our kitchen, and as part of that we painted our cream laminate kitchen cabinets and drawers. The cabinets were in pretty good condition, but the colour was just dated and wasn't our style, so this was a relatively cheap update that made a massive difference to our kitchen. Its not hard to paint over laminate, but it is a bit tedious and if you want it to look good, you have to take your time and do it right! I was worried that I would really stuff them up! Its the worst when you have a vision in your head and your DIY goes totally pear shaped! Thankfully, it worked our great! So here are my tips for painting laminate cabinets:

First, its good to remove the cupboards from their hinges, remove the drawer faces from the drawer, and remove any handles

Then, you need to make sure its clean, so clean (scrub in some cases, ha) them all down both sides with a clean cloth and Sugar Soap and dry them off.

Then they need to be Primed, as regular paint will just peel and scratch off laminate. We did our research and the best Primer for the job was Dulux Precision Maximum Strength Adhesion Primer, that is recommended to use on laminate. It goes on really smoothly, and I found the best results when I used a roller (I used the Monarch Razorback Foam roller and found the results were really smooth and even)

Top Cabinets are Dulux White on White, bottom Dulux Misty Moore.

After one coat of primer, then its time to paint with the chosen colour. We did Dulux White on White for the high cabinets and Dulux Misty Moore for the bottom cabinets and drawers, plus any of the other laminate cabinetry that can be seen around the kitchen was also cleaned/primed and then painted for a uniform look. For the white cabinets we tried Dulux Aquanamel in 'Low Gloss', because I didn't want to have a glossy looking kitchen, but wanted the durability of Aquanamel. I actually didn't love using it, it was more difficult to mix all the colour in than I'm used to and no matter how much I stirred I still had specks of blue coming through, thankfully none of them showed up on the final coat, but it was a pain to have to continue stirring even in the mixing tray. We couldn't get the darker colour Misty Moore in the low gloss, and I'm actually so glad now, we opted for Dulux Semi-Gloss Aquanamel and it went on great! Really smooth, and doesn't have an overly glossy look when applied with a roller. I used the same Monarch Roller as mentioned above.

I used saw-horses to lay out the cupboards and carefully rolled each cupboard, one side at a time, starting with the back side, leaving ample drying time in between sides, and then did 2 coats of the top colour.

I recommend labeling or putting the cupboards/drawers in order so you know exactly where they need to go back because it can get confusing. We didn't paint the bottom edge for the lower cabinets and top edge for the higher ones, so that's where we wrote which position each cabinet or drawer was!

It takes about a week for the paint to really cure and harden, so you have to be a bit more careful with the cabinets during that time to prevent the paint from scratching or chipping off.

DIY Washi Tape Easter Eggs

I'm pretty excited that this Easter I finally have a child that is old enough to enjoy some good old fashioned Easter Egg decorating with me! Ever since I was little I've been a pretty big fan of Easter crafts, I remember making many Easter baskets throughout my childhood. But, now that I think about it, it was probably just because I was worried that the Easter bunny would forget me if I didn't have a pretty basket! There's no way I wanted to miss out on that chocolate!

D.I.Y Chevron Baby Headband

Although I named this a tutorial for a baby headband, it would also work and look really cute on toddlers and little kids too! You just might have to adjust the length a little! I'm generally not a huge fan of headbands for babies, especially when, like mine, they have no hair!! ha. But, I just couldn't resist. I love a little chevron boho style for babies, and something nice and bright like this is a bit of fun. So, I decided to give it a shot and use some leftover  wool and make it in a friendship bracelet macrame style I used to do as a kid, but as a headband, surely it would work the same!

DIY Pom Pom Garland

I know it is drawing a little too near to Christmas, but I have an easy Christmas (or even not so Christmas) D.I.Y to share. Seeing most of my Christmas decorations and Christmas tree is still in storage I wanted to do something, that didn't take too much time and effort, to make the house feel a little more festive. So, what better than a pom-pom garland DIY.

A Huge Granny Square Baby Blanket

I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of this crocheting thing a little bit, this is my second baby blanket and I took on the granny square. Granted I haven't tackled anything harder than a blanket, but baby steps right! Plus blankets are pretty useful, and make for really nice gifts as well!

So, if you're interested, here are the details about what I used, and how it's done.

This is just one giant granny square, I was going to make smaller ones and then thought, hmmm I'm just going to keep going until it got big enough that I was satisfied. I did 27 rounds, alternating colours each round. The edge is just two rows of single crochets. I guess I could have just done a granny stripe blanket, then it would look the same but be a rectangle rather than a square.

The crochet hook I used was 9mm

The wool is Cleckheaton Country Aran 10ply colour #4006 and Cleckheaton Country Naturals 8ply colour #1805

I had 4 x 50 g balls of wool of each colour, and I used about 3 and a half of each colour (so approx 175g of each).

If you don't know how to crochet a granny square, I watched this series of You tube videos this is lesson 1 (I think there are five or six) http://youtu.be/79zZJjXRfSM, the videos are really thorough and nice and slow, I found them awesome. Of course I have to flip everything around because I'm left handed.

If you want to see my first crochet blanket, it's a Yellow and Grey Chevron baby blanket. Just click HERE

I think this is one of the easiest blankets you can crochet, and it was really quick!! So a great one for beginners like me!

x Karen

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DIY Heart Embroidery Wall Hanging

This hearts embroidery is something that I made a while ago, but it is really quite quick and simple to make, it looks great and is a nice homemade crafty embroidery piece to add to your home. So, I thought I would do a little DIY tutorial, which includes how to iron- on transfer embroidery patterns or images onto your fabric. It would go perfectly is a kids bedroom or as a part a collage of prints and pictures on your wall in any room.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

-Embroidery Hoop (I used a 9 inch hoop, but you can scale the pattern to any size you want)

- Un-dyed Calico or white cotton material

- Needle

- Embroidery floss (at least one colour, but you can use all different colours if your prefer)

- Tracing Paper

- Iron on transfer Pencil

- Iron

- A printer to print out the pattern

- Scissors 

optional: Some craft clue to glue down the material to the hoop

HOW YOU DO IT

1. Print off the template from HERE

2. Trace the hearts onto the tracing paper with an iron on transfer pencil (I bought mine from Spotlight) 

3. With the pencil marks facing downwards dry (not steam) iron the pattern onto the calico that is cut to the size to fit in the hoop with about 4-5 cm extra material around the hoop.

4. Put the iron on patterned calico in the hoop stretch so it is nice and tight and then tighten the hoop.

5. The stitch I used for the hearts is the simple back stitch. Which means you are just putting the needle back through the hole that your previous stitch created (see picture). 

6. Once they are all finished trim the material around the edge of the hoop, and glue it down. 

use the hoop to line it up correctly and then remove to iron!

Make sure the pencil is sharp, you don't want these lines too thick!

The back stick, makes it look nice and neat.

Then you are finished and it is ready to hang.
Oh so so easy! But it looks really nice!

Karen xx

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