Saving Our 90s Kitchen!

We’ve wanted to scrap that old light for years, so we switched it out for a handful of new LED wafer lights and wired them to a dimmer switch for easy adjusting during the daytime or evening. What’s great about these wafer lights is that they can be installed even where there’s not enough space for a traditional can light. The ones we used also have a color temperature adjustment switch so you can choose your desired look easily.

These lights are easy to install, but if you’re not sure what all is involved you can check out the thousands of tutorials on HomeDepot.com and The Home Depot mobile app. Of course, if you’re not comfortable doing this job, call a qualified electrician to do the work.

Structurally these cabinets are in great shape, they just needed a little help in the cosmetic department. One of the things we did in addition to painting them was to update the molding from traditional crown molding to the same modern cove molding that we used in our laundry room renovation last winter.

I took down all of the doors and removed the drawers and appliances so that I could prep the cabinet boxes for painting.
Around the stove, there was a film of grease that needed to be cleaned off of the surface.
I used a 50/50 solution of denatured alcohol and a Scotch Brite pad to scrub the surfaces and then filled the grain with Dap’s wood putty. Once everything was cleaned and puttied, I sanded back the putty so I had a consistently smooth surface. Then it was time to mask off the entire kitchen in preparation to paint the cabinets.
My primer of choice (especially when painting red oak) is General Finishes Stain Blocker. It does a great job of preventing tannins from bleeding through light-colored paints. After the primer was applied, I waited 24 hours before spraying 2 coats of General Finishes Brush-able White Enamel. I repeated this process of cleaning, grain filling, and painting on the doors and drawer faces.

Once the doors and drawer faces had dried for a few days, I reinstalled them and added new brushed brass knobs and pulls we found at our local The Home Depot store. We love the design of this hardware and given that our cabinets originally didn’t have knobs or pulls, we also really like the addition from a functionality standpoint.

The electric slide-in range has a couple of features we really like. The Easy Clean setting for the oven makes cleaning up spills in the bottom of the oven quick and painless, and with an integrated bottom heating element, you won’t have to try to scrub around it. I also think the rich blue interior color is just kind of a fun touch from a design standpoint. The Ultra Heat feature on the larger burners is also super handy when you need to boil a large pot of water quickly.

The dishwasher has a really cool feature that I’ve not seen before. There’s a third row in the top!
This is great for thinner items like spatulas, measuring spoons, or other small items that usually take up needed space elsewhere.
The dishwasher is also quiet and has a handful of unique wash cycle options (like the ability to only wash the top or bottom rack) to reduce the amount of energy used.

The above-the-range microwaveis a great complement to the slide-in range. The exhaust fan and stove light are both great accessories to have for anyone that does a fair bit of cooking. The “melt” and “soften” functions are also helpful when you just need to warm things up a bit as you work through a recipe.