Our Kitchen Makeover: Changing Kitchen Cabinet Doors & More

Our kitchen renovation here in Florida is finally nearing the end. I’m so pleased with its transformation, and I like to think it’s a great example of using what you have. We didn’t change the layout of this kitchen, the electrical, or the plumbing, so it kept the renovation fairly easy and a lot less costly.

Last Spring, we started our kitchen makeover here in our Florida house. Our kitchen was fairly new, but we didn’t love the organgey-oak cabinets. Fortunately, the cabinets themselves were still in good condition.

Changing Kitchen Cabinet Doors

We opted to go with a company who makes cabinet doors to size. You do need to be meticulous in the measurement of your existing doors, so measure twice and doublecheck your work!

They also offer new hardware, so if you’re wanting soft-close cabinets and drawers, you can change those out too!

In about six weeks, we had our new cabinet doors ready to install!

This part took us a weekend. We scrubbed the cabinet boxes and painted any exposed areas white. Then Mike installed the doors. Even by just changing the doors, the kitchen had an entirely different feel. It was so bright!

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As I said, this renovation was slow-mo and took us about a year, so we waited a few weeks and started looking at changing the countertops. We needed to decide what to do with the kitchen island. It wasn’t serving a strong purpose.

We knew we eventually wanted to remove the microwave over the range and install a hood range there. We did that at our last house, and it’s such a great look.

So we purchased a drawer microwave. We loved the one we used while vacationing on 30a at a rental house. Drawer microwaves make it easy for our kids to help with dinner or reheating their own meals.

We also wanted a beverage/wine refrigerator, so we picked up one of those on sale too.

That left us with space in between them for a cabinet. We love IKEA’s deep drawers, and I was also feeling like the kitchen was getting a bit too white and bright. We brought in a deep navy cabinet. It’s the Axstad in navy blue. SOMEHOW – and I gotta give him props – Mike was able to build those three things into a beautiful island.

Ok, I actually do know a bit more. He purchased another SEKTION cabinet for the microwave that has a shelf. We lowered the shelf and placed the drawer microwave on that. There’s also a small drawer at the bottom, where I keep my pots and cookware! So you do actually need two cabinets for this island project.

After he built that, we were ready for the countertops and backsplash!