I can't stand my kitchen cupboards anymore. They are off white, with oak trim for handles along the tops or bottoms (depending on if they're upper or lower cupboards). The off white is like plastic laminate over MDF or press board. New cabinetry is not a financial option for me for another 5 years or so. What can I do to make my cabinets nicer. I'm hesitant to paint them because the laminate along the edges is starting to peel off. Could I remove the old laminate and put on new stuff? Is this labour intensive? Can I remove the old handle edging and replace it with a piece of wood or wood product, then cover the entire surface and install proper hardware will it work. Where can one buy new laminate? What is the price range? If anyone has any ideas about this or has completed a similar project, I would love to hear your advice.
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I have painted these cabinets and they look good when they are done. I had the same cabinets in my kitchen and I was not a big fan of the wooden strip. I pryed this off and used iron-on veneer to cover the hole in the bottom of the door. I fastened 1 inch panel moulding about 2 inches from the edge of the door to give it a raised panel effect. The door was lowered to line up with the bottom of the cabinet and I filled the gap created at the top with crown moulding.
amy - I totally know what you are talking about - we have the exact same ones! Don't you just hate them? Apparently they were big with builders in the 80's! And I am constantly breaking nails while opening them!
We would like to reface the doors at some point, but I think I'll look into painting them, now that I've dustbunnydiva's advice!
on a show that was on not too long ago. They had painted them a few different ways I believe (including the handle part).
If your laminate is loose you might be able to get it off but it might be easier to glue it back down and fill the parts that are chipped off and paint (using a good primer like BIN). The other thing you might be able to do is reface them with another material like a thin masonite, MDF, or wood. If you fixed the fronts you could also add panel pieces around the outside edge (see a post in D&D called 'changing the style of 50's cupboards'...I may not have that exactly right but at the moment it is on page 2 of that forum. There is a brilliant idea there for changing the face of a door). If you did the reface or added panels, you could cover the handle part right up I bet.
On some shows they have painted the handle part the same as the door and added nice handles, on others they just painted them another colour. There are so many people with those style doors that a few places have shown how to update them. Debi Travis did some in some very shiny paint that ended up looking very urban.