Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations!! How we did it!! and Manic Monday!!

So, this Manic Monday's post should be sponsored by Rustoleum, seeing as my weekend recap is all about one of their products, but it's not, but I will still give you the lowdown on how my weekend reno's went, and stay tuned tomorrow for After Pics!! Be sure to head on over to Life As I Know It, and link up for Manic Monday's....

So, we pretty much pulled it off again this weekend, although the after pics won't be up until tomorrow, as I have yet to even take them. But at this very moment my kitchen is put back together. So here's a breakdown of how our weekend worked out:

• Friday 5pm - Eric gets home from work, and finishes taking the cabinet doors off the hinges(we started doing this Thursday night and taping off the areas we didn't want paint to get as we knew it would be time consuming and it definitely was - all in all cabinet door removal and taping took over 5hrs). We first drew a diagram of the cabinets assembled in our kitchen numbering each cabinet door on the back with painters tape (so there was no guess work when it was time to put it all back together). I bought paper cups to put the corresponding hinges in, also numbered with the corresponding door (Rustoleum's diagram pretty much layed out how to do it so check out there web page for the specific hows to's)

• Friday 7pm - start deglossing the cabinets - this step is labour intensive, but I kept reminding myself much easier then sanding all the cabinets - you are supposed to degloss everything then wipe it all down and let it dry for an hr - but by the time I was done wiping everything down, it had been an hour
• Friday - 8:30pm - First coat of the bond coat....loving the color - need to let it dry 2-3 hrs (which is pretty much how long it took to paint all our cabinets, the cabinet frames, two vanity cabinets and two vanity doors).
• Saturday - 12:30 am - Apply Second coat of the bond coat to the backs of the doors and cabinet frames
• Saturday - 2:30 am - Apply the first coat of the bond coat to the fronts of the cabinet doors (which Eric did on his own as I had fallen asleep, what can I say I need my sleep...)
• Saturday - 9am - Apply second coat of the bond coat to the fronts of the cabinets, and start decorative glazing the cabinet frames (this step we only applied two the front of the cabinet doors and frames, and it definitely helped define the wood grain, and made the cabinets less flat). The decorative glaze needs 8 hrs to dry. So during those 8 hours we did all of the above steps to a pantry, two wooden chests, two dressers, two nightstands, a massive headboard - minus the door fronts as we ran out of workspace (so that's the 90% finished part as we still have to do the door fronts, the drawers are all done just not the fronts of the doors)
• Saturday 9pm - Apply Protective Top Coat to the backs of the doors and cabinet frames, let dry over night (or 12 hrs)
• Sunday 9am - Apply Protective Top Coat to the front of the doors and let dry 12 hrs, which we only did 10hrs before rehanging the cabinet doors (as they felt dry to the touch as seemingly were as there's no sign of smudges or fingerprints on the doors)
• Sunday - 7pm - rehang cabinet doors, and install new hardware - loving it!! Looks soooo good, our kitchen was made to be this dark.
• Monday Morning - Hubby is putting some molding underneath the cabinets to hide our new under-cabinet lighting

So, all in all I LOVE LOVE LOVE the look of my new cabinets, I was worried it would make my counter tops look super ugly, as they have a lot of green in them, but I like the counter tops a lot better now, and the new handles look amazing. So stay tuned tomorrow for the after pics.... Hope everyone had a great weekend!!!

Amy