...tears of joy.
Because...
Several months ago I got click-baited into reading one of those "Ten Ways to Make Your Home Look More Expensive" articles the online arm of a decorators' magazine threw onto the internet. Maybe it's just how the algorithm gets me but I see those kinds of articles from blogs, magazine, home websites, etc, all the time. Everyone thinks they know which I why I don't usually give two snippets about what they say because much of the time they're all fluffy opinion based on trends or based on zilch but one of the points in this particular article was to "add reeding". At the time I was reading said article, we had already solidified our plans to add reeded panels to our kid's bathroom cabinets in an effort to update them and now that they're done, I'm 100% here to say that yes, one way to make your house look more expensive is to add reeding.
In twenty years, they'll be spouting the one thing that's dating your house is reeding, won't they?
I'll add some photos for proof but first, here are the cabinets I'm talking about.
I started working on these two years ago and just finished a few weeks ago. I know. I'm a great starter, not a great finisher. Blame the kids. These cabinets were custom made in 1983, well made (albeit laden with chipping paint), and knowing how much that would cost today and not wanting to throw out quality cabinets, we gave them a whole new life with gel stain and reeded panels.
I know that, being custom made and 40 years old, no one's chomping at the bit to find a blog post on how to make over these exact cabinets but I'll tell you a little bit (ended up being quite a lot...be warned) about the process just in case you have some cabinets you don't want to toss but might take that box and step outside it.
First, I took all of the doors off the cabinet. Since we had plans to add double sinks, the drawers would be getting reworked so I didn't worry about those until later since they were still heavily in use during the whole process.
To add the reeded panels, I had to remove all of the wood trim around the inside edge of each cabinet door.
This was a lot harder to do than I thought it would be. I had tried doing this on a matching cabinet door we had taken out of our kitchen long ago and the trim just popped right out with some crow bar effort as it was just glued in. However, after struggling with one, ONE small strip of trim on ONE door, I realized the trim on these cabinets was glued and nailed in. So, I did what I had to do - I gave up for weeks to regroup and rethink my plan. Eye rolls and frustrated sighs for days. Well, it must've been the post-pregnancy desire to do something productive but I started again one day armed with our multi-tool, a crow bar, and a metal scraper and worked for a week getting the rest of the trim off of all of the doors.
Once the trim was out, I sanded all of the cabinet doors down to the beautiful maple wood beneath the paint. I also took all of the drawers out at this point - Anthony disassembled them so that all I had were the front faces, and those got sanded as well.
Let me tell you that sanding is not for the faint of heart. I once sanded down a pair of nightstands and said I'd never do that again but then you see how good they look and you find yourself sanding down cabinet doors years later...saying you'll never do it again. But you will because the beauty of raw wood can woo you and woo you good.
However, I did have to cheat. Wood refinishers, look away. Our cabinet doors have multi-faceted routed edges that I couldn't sand (read: tried and failed) and didn't want to spend hours upon probably years chipping away at with a small wire brush. (A friend told me I could buy a rotary tool* that would help but I wasn't sold it would save me loads of time and definitely wouldn't save me money at this point so I didn't.) So, I brushed off all of the chipping paint that I could and painted over the edges (just the edges!) with paint that matched the final finish. It's not quite as good as being completely sanded and stained but it's pretty dang good and worth saving every ounce of time and energy in my humble (lazy?) opinion.
Once the doors and drawer fronts were sanded, I stained them with Golden Oak gel stain (by Varathane) - sponge brush on, let sit for three minutes, wipe off. This stain was recommended to me by a friend who does a lot of refinishing because it's one of the few lighter colored gel stains readily available in stores, which is what I was going for. It ended up having a little more orange in it than I wanted but once I had started, I wasn't going backwards and resanding to just have to try another stain. (They really should make tiny samples of these things.) When I say "a little more orange" though, it really is just a tad. Our wood is mostly brown and warm and gorgeous.
After the doors were stained, we cut some some panels out of quarter-inch thick plywood to fit right inside the door faces and then glued them in. We'd later glue our reeded panels to this - the plywood raised the panels up so they weren't so sunken inside the door frames but so they'd sit just beneath the face of each door; maybe 1/8 of an inch down.
While the glue on the plywood dried, Anthony was busy cutting reeded panels to fit. I stained the panels to match and then they were glued in as well. These are the reeded panels we bought. (Side note: our cabinets are maple so I bought maple panels but the most affordable panels were the panels I linked. Turns out there are different grain patterns in maple and curly maple is that of our cabinets but ambrosia maple is that of the reeded panels. Ambrosia maple has grayish-brown streaks, unlike our maple which doesn't. So in the end, the panels look a little more rustic with their color variation than I would have liked. They also didn't stain the greatest - I ended up having to do two coats of gel stain plus a paint wash with the same paint I painted the edges of the doors with over the top to warm them up a smidge. The paint wash was a 1:8ish ratio of paint to water that I just brushed over the top of the dried gel stain. Finding curly maple reeded panels that didn't take up the whole budget or put us over was nearly impossible so we're happy with where we ended up.)
Once the glue was dry and these panels in for good, it was time to kick up my heels at the progress and seal these things. So close to the finish line, so close. I used this sealer* in matte which I found for a steal of a deal at Dirt Cheap (now bankrupt and gone forever) years ago. I applied with my fave Purdy paint brush* and the finish is So. Good. - not too shiny, just a matte glare but all the protection a kids' bathroom needs.
At this point, the doors and drawer fronts were all sealed and ready to go. The cabinet frame was sanded, stained, and sealed as well. We installed the new countertop (a whole 'nother project) that we cut ourselves (ahem, that Anthony cut) and installed new plumbing and the prettiest and most kid-friendly faucets* - easy on/off, don't swivel, and very wipeable.
Anthony worked some magic, reusing drawer parts to create a new drawer in the middle of the cabinet (where there used to be a dummy drawer) and I turned the two ends into tip out drawers with this kit. I scored some used, antique gold hinges at ReStore for $4 for four hinges and, even though they were the hinges we needed, one of the screw holes on newer hinges is in a different place than the same hole on old hinges like ours. Boo. So the ease of just screwing on the "new" hinges wasn't to be and I ended up having to scrap the new and strip the paint off the old hinges (by putting them in boiling water + vinegar and scrubbing) and painting them and the screw tops with Rub 'n Buff in European Gold.
It was an annoying hiccup to have to redo all of the hinges but they look fantastic now and they "match" the cabinets which you know I'm a huge fan of.
The last thing I did before putting everything back together was line the entire cabinet bottom and drawer with this removable wallpaper; the same one that lines the back of the bathroom closet on the opposite wall.
Oh wait, the wallpaper actually wasn't the last thing. There is one more thing I added to the whole shebang that, though relatively small, added so much. I added faux feet slash a decorative toe kick to top (or should I say bottom?) things off. Besides the reeded panels, this was the part of the project I was the most excited about. I cut up an old maple drawer face we had stowed away after our kitchen remodel and loosely followed this tutorial to make the toe kick.
Whew, that was a doozy. It's ridiculous that it took us two whole years to rework and makeover a bathroom cabinet but 1) it's pretty long at six feet and 2) throw a pregnancy and infant into the mix and it all makes sense, right?
I can confidently say that this bathroom, with the help of our new reeded cabinet, definitely looks more "expensive". So, if you want to up the ante somewhere, add reeding. I'm telling ya. Ca-ching.
Speaking of ca-ching, let's talk budget and how much this ended up costing us...
gel stain - $30
reeded panels - $105
cabinet hardware* - $30 (Amazon Warehouse)
wallpaper - $15 (eBay)
rub 'n buff - $6 (eBay)
paint sample - $0 (Lowe's promo)
tools and sandpaper were things used we've had for years - buying sandpaper in bulk* on amazon is the way to go
Total for the cabinet only - $186
But then add what we added up top, which is where the bulk of our cash went...
granite countertop - $150 (a remnant found on Facebook Marketplace)
blade* for cutting granite, polishing bit*, and faucet hole drill bit* - $65 (purchased to cut the quartz countertop in our powder bathroom and used again)
granite sealer - $10
faucets - $180 for both (Amazon Warehouse)
sinks* - $140 for both
Grand total - $731...which isn't a drop in the bucket but if you consider that six foot long cabinets with reeded detail that are made out of wood and not the cheap stuff will cost you upwards of $2000 (and that's a deal!), we doin' good. Real good.
I've written about all there is to write about this little cabinet but there are two takeaways I think sum it all up - reeding most definitely adds value to cabinetry and finished wood cabinets in a kids' bathroom is the way to go. Faustin has pushed his little stool up against those cabinets with gusto 294 times since they've been finished and there is nary a mark to be seen. If they were painted, I'd really be weeping tears of sadness.
Happy Monday!
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