My $100 Kitchen Cabinet Makeover!

I'm so excited to share today's post. It's something I've been working on for about 2 months, on and off. But it is finished and so today I'm sharing how we renovated our kitchen cabinets for about $100.

When we bought our house in a little over a year ago, I fell in love with the kitchen just by the listings photos.

UPDATE!!! Check out this post to see how I also stained my island!

It was HUGE and there was about a billion cabinets. The kitchen in our old house was a pretty good size also and I knew I would not be content with a smaller kitchen. So these pictures sold me.

We bought the house and moved in and I lived with the kitchen for awhile but the cabinet color was really bugging me. I liked the counter tops well enough but they clashed with the cabinets. We did not have the money to replace all those cabinets so the next decision was to either paint or stain them.

I stumbled upon General Finishes Gel Stain and thought the idea of it was awesome. There's no sanding required which is huge because I have little kids in the house and I needed to still be able to use my kitchen. Plus it was pretty inexpensive! I found it on Amazon (not an affiliate link) for a little over $30 a quart but lucky for me, we have a local hardware store that sells it for $21 a quart! Total we ended up using 3 quarts of stain and 1 quart of the top coat.  That plus brushes, mineral spirits for cleaning, etc, came to around $100. Now that price we could handle!

So we taped and stained. And stained some more. All in, I think we did about 4 coats. We started by taking all the doors off and staining just the frame completely. Then we put the doors back on and stained the doors and drawers.

We used the General Finishes Antique Walnut Gel Stain and the Arm-R-Seal. I wasn't sure whether to get the Semi-Gloss or Satin, and once I put one coat of the semi-gloss on, it was as shiny as I wanted it to be. So we stopped at 1 coat. I hope I don't regret not putting on more.

We were fortunate that the previous owner had replaced all the cabinet handles already so they were in perfect condition and didn't need to be replaced. 

We also made in a few changes right after we moved in, including buying an island. The island doesn't "match" now, but I'm really not sure if I want to stain it. It doesn't bother me too much as it is. 

My husband is an electrician and he added the hanging pendant lights above the peninsula and lowered the light above the sink. I also painted the backsplash white with paint I already had. I wanted it to be white to brighten the whole space up more. Plus, the previous owners painted the
WHOLE house in a flat or egg shell paint, including the backsplash, which is impossible to clean when you get grease or food on it. 

So here is the final result! I'm so happy with how it turned out!

I love that you can still see the wood grain and handles really pop against the dark color! Plus, now I love the counter tops! The dark cabinet color pulled out the dark spots in the counter and I like it so much better!

I love farmhouse style and I know most "farmhouse" kitchens are lighter cabinets I decided to do my own thing and go dark, but still incorporate some of my farmhouse decor in pops of red.

I was not paid by General Finishes to give my opinion, I just really liked their product! It was relatively easy and I would recommend it if you are looking to update your cabinets.

Here is a before and after side-by-side to compare!

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!