When I adopted my Golden Retriever 16 years ago, I was maddened by the dog smell. He was 9 months old and didn’t have any accidents inside, he didn’t go in the carpeted areas of the house, and I cleaned constantly, but still couldn’t get rid of the smell.

Since then, I’ve had another (even stinkier) dog and hosted over 150 dogs in my house (up to 7 at a time!) with my dog-sitting business. I have been so excited to hear many times throughout all that, guests commenting that they couldn’t smell the dogs or see the fur anywhere.

So here’s what I did to keep our house smelling and looking clean, AND keeping the dogs comfortable, clean, and happy:

Daily cleaning tasks with dogs:

• Run the robot vacuum (automatically–and bonus tip: run it on a schedule, so it forces you to tidy the floor before it runs). I’ve tried many of these, and in 100% honesty, I LOVED the inexpensive ones and nearly despised the expensive name brand ones. My favorites are the Deebot and the iLife.
• Run a lint roller over your clothes. I do this before cooking (we keep one in a kitchen drawer). It keeps fur out of the food of course, but also off of everything else you touch and sit on.

As-needed cleaning through the week:

• Spritz Kids-N-Pets enzyme cleaner on problem areas or areas the pets frequent takes care of small odor issues.
• Spot clean any carpeted areas or fabric furniture that are stinky for whatever reason. You can use Kids-N-Pets diluted in water with a towel to scrub and then cover with a clean, dry towel, or use a spot cleaner. This spot cleaner gets regular use around here.
• A couple times a week, brush the dogs (outside) to keep loose fur out. You can use any brush for this, even a hairbrush works well on many dogs.
• Clean their paws. Doggy feet get stinky and transfer that stink to the floors, so when needed use the MudBuster paw cleaner–usually once or twice a week. Then dry with a towel. You’ll have less stink on the soft floors and less paw prints on the hard floors. If you don’t have a MudBuster, use a very wet towel to scrub, then a dry towel.
• Dry shampoo the dogs, my DIY dry shampoo recipe is my favorite, and it’s practically free. For me, this is usually about once a month, in between baths.
• Shake out rugs. I was impressed by how much these rugs actually work. We keep one outside the back door (on a covered deck) and one inside the door for double the dirt catching. I would like to shake them out daily, but it’s usually once or twice a week.

Weekly cleaning tasks:

• Use a deshedding brush on the dogs.
  If you have a double-coated dog, you might want to take pictures of the second dog you could create out of the fur…fur that would be all over your house otherwise.
  Different deshedding brushes work on different breeds. For double coated dogs, the ShedMonster has been my absolute favorite. For short-haired dogs (and cats), I love the EquiGroomer (I learned about it from the great groomer, Girl With The Dogs, so it’s safe and effective.)
• Remove fur from fabric furniture. Very lightly mist the fabric with water, then put on rubber cleaning gloves and wipe the furniture down with your hands. It’s AMAZING how much better this works than a lint roller, and there is no burning through roller refills either.
  It picks up all the fur way better than a lint roller does, and there’s no waste and no refills to buy.
• Remove fur from bedding. Your bedding and theirs. The Chom Chom is so good for large surfaces.
• Run a full-sized vacuum on carpeted areas. Twice in a row. You’ll be amazed at what comes up with a second cleaning, whether you have dogs or not, but especially if you do.
• Mop hard floors. (Don’t use Kids-N-Pets in your mopping liquid, it makes them VERY slippery.) You can do a full mop, but even a Swiffer-style wet mop will make a big difference.
• Wash the rugs in the hottest water you can. If you get the rugs I recommend, don’t use vinegar on them as it will break down the non-slip backing. If they are stinky, soak them in water with Oxiclean overnight before washing.

Bi-monthly or monthly cleaning:

• Clean the carpet. After running the vacuum (twice!), clean the carpet with a carpet cleaner, preferably using Kids-N-Pets as your cleaning solution (it’s natural and actually eliminates the odor instead of masking it with fake ones and it’s the most effective natural ones we’ve found). And don’t worry, cleaning the carpet with the right cleaner is just as easy as vacuuming.
  This is my favorite carpet cleaner for dogs. It does a great job at getting out the gross, and if you take your time, it dries the carpet pretty well too.
  For the first year or so, I kept everybody (human and dog) off the carpets while they dried, but then realized it didn’t really matter in the end. Before bed is a great time to do it though if you’d rather not walk on damp carpet.
• Bathe the dogs.
  There’s much advice about how often to bathe your dog. After having 3 of my own, and having over 150 visiting dogs, I’ve found that every dog has different needs. Some need a bath monthly, some weekly. When your dog no longer smells neutral or feels pleasant, they’re are likely feeling it too and start scratching and rolling in the grass excessively. Give ’em a bath. For double coated dogs, a silicone dog brush helps tremendously to get the shampoo all the way to the skin when bathing. It’s important to get all the way to the skin if you’re going to remove the smell. (If you struggle to get the shampoo all the way to the skin, that might mean they have slightly matted fur, use a “slicker” brush to clean that up, then bathe.) I do 2 to 4 shampoos per bath, depending on how clean the fur feels. Start with 2 if you’re not sure.
  Dry thoroughly after the bath, otherwise they’ll just bring in fresh wet dog smell and undo everything. Towel dry (2 to 3 towels with lots of encouraged “Shake” in between, then let them run around outside while you clean up–tossing some kibble into the grass keeps them excited by engaging their hunting needs and keeps them busy while they dry out a little–we say “Kibble hunt!”). Then once you’re ready, blow dry to make sure they’re dry to the skin.
• Wash their bedding in the hottest water you can. I like to spray it down with Kids-N-Pets first and lay it outside to dry, then wash normally with soap, but using vinegar instead of fabric softener. It comes out with the least smell and the softest that way.

Recommended products to keep dog smell out

To keep the dogs clean

Paw cleaner

Effective at cleaning stinky paws before the smell transfers to the house.

Buy Now

ShedMonster

For deshedding double-coated breeds, I recommend this twice a week.

Buy Now

Equigroomer

Originally made for horses, this works so well on short-haired dogs (and great on my cat too!).

Buy Now

Silicone Dog Brush

Great for our Berner who has fine hair, both for de-shedding and bathing

Buy Now

To keep the house clean

Oxiclean

Oxiclean takes the dog smell straight out of clothes and bedding. For really strong smells, soak overnight.

Buy Now

Carpet and furniture spot cleaner

This is perfect for accidents on carpet, or just frequently used areas. I use it on my upholstered living room chairs as well with great results.

Buy Now

Chom Chom Roller

Much more effective than a traditional lint roller on large surfaces, and no refills to buy!

Buy Now

Door mats

They’re not all that cute, but they make a big difference!

Buy Now

Gloves for picking up fur

These gloves work way better than lint rollers for gathering fur. Just a light mist of water on the surface of your furniture or clothes, then swipe with the gloves and you’re done! So easy.

Buy Now

Carpet Cleaner

Carpet cleaner that’s as easy to use as a vacuum. This runs weekly in our house to keep the dog smell away.

Buy Now

Kids-n-pets

The most effective odor eliminator (even urine). Great for spraying directly on accidents, or for using in the carpet cleaner.

Buy Now

Deebot Robot Vacuum

Our favorite vacuum if you DO have a smart house. (WAY better than Roomba from our experience–and way more affordable.)

Buy Now

ILife Robot Vacuum

Perfect vacuum to run daily if you DON’T have a smart house. (Currently only $99)

Buy Now

Dyson Animal Vacuum (Refubished)

We’ve been using our refurbished (half-price) Dyson for 8 years and it’s still working beautifully.

Buy Now

And one last point: humidity makes a huge difference. The less humid your house is, the less it will smell like dog. Even if you do everything listed above, if your house is very humid, you’re going to smell the dog(s). Consider a dehumidifier if it’s an ongoing problem, otherwise, just remember it’s temporary and you’ll be back to normal when the humidity is.

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Our cabin came with a medium-ish sized dresser in the bedroom. It’s about 3.5′ tall and 2′ wide. The drawers were pretty shallow, which could be a good thing. Except that we’re just not big fans of dressers. We’ve found that if we have to go through the very laborious task of pulling a drawer out, we’re just not very likely to use it, or keep them neat if and when we do use them.

Okay, apparently we’re lazy. BUT I do still very much prefer to keep cleaning up after ourselves as easy as humanly possible so we can spend more time doing more fun productive things.

To make this particular dresser worse than most though, was that it had been sloppily painted several times, so all of the drawers stuck and went all wonky every time we tried to use it. So I gave up and it sat there empty for months.

In the meantime, I had been trying forever to come up with shoe storage ideas for our shoes, which had just been sitting randomly and inconveniently on the floor.

Then came my idea for a free shoe cabinet: take the useless dresser, remove the drawers and use the base of each drawer as a shelf to fill in the hole that was left behind under each drawer and store the shoes in there until we get to a permanent solution.

The cool thing about this project is that it doesn’t have to be temporary! If you get the dresser you want and have the space for it, this would be a great permanent shoe shelf/cabinet…and no one would know it was a DIY. In fact, even a cheap dresser could potentially look pretty custom.

So!

What do do with the rest of the dresser parts

You’ll now have a pile of bottomless drawers. You can just toss them in a burn pile (if they’re solid, unpainted wood). Or if you like doing small projects like I do, you can disassemble them for use elsewhere. Personally, I’m thinking picture rails or shallow wall shelves for the bathroom or kitchen.

You may also have a pile of handles or knobs you could give a makeover to and use elsewhere. Spray paint can work wonders on knobs. If not, I’ve always been able to find a customer for things like this on FB Marketplace, listed for free (or if you paid for your dresser, maybe you can recoup some of the money by charging for the knobs?).

If you try it, please share below, we’d love to hear about it!

The post DIY Shoe Cabinet – For Free in Under 10 Minutes appeared first on Little Victorian.

One of the projects we wanted to tackle for our dining room in the $100 Room Challenge was an upgraded dog gate. It wasn’t super high on the list of priorities, but it all just came together for only $3.75 so I couldn’t resist.

Update: I’ve gotten a couple irate comments on Pinterest over this gate (even an accusation that I created this so I could laugh when strangers children fell and injured themselves). People claimed that their dogs and/or children would climb it. First: if it’s not for you, you don’t have to do it! Second: we are dog sitters and had dozens of dogs of all ages and sizes while we had this gate and NOT ONE tried to climb it. Two of them put their front paws on top…and nothing happened. Third: if you have trouble with your child, you should clearly consider other options. Everyone else: please enjoy this very easy, cheap, and effective project.

We have a nice little entryway at the front door, but with the dog boarding business, we need a way to keep dogs back and safely inside when the front door is opened.

We have a really nice, fancy baby gate set up, but there are three annoyances with it:

1. A lot of people trip over it coming or going because it has a bottom piece that you don’t really notice, which is terrible (and the most important annoyance).
2. Guests also always have to ask how to get out, which is also silly to have to do, and unfortunately, they often get a little embarrassed.
3. It’s not pretty.
   I actually didn’t even notice how unattractive it was until I was taking the “before” picture for the challenge.

Here is the previous one:

And now:

As I like to do when I need to decorate on a budget, I started the project by browsing Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for free items. Usually I’m looking for things that could be given a cheap makeover, or taken apart for parts to build something else.

Knowing we wanted to DIY a gate, all I saw when I came across a free crib were tons of free gate parts.

This was the crib (originally):

We picked up it, and were super excited when we got home to find out that the side pieces were the perfect size for our doorways! We actually didn’t even have to take it apart for parts, just add hinges and a door latch. (I did trim down the two side pieces on top because they were too tall.)

So project breakdown for the new gate:

• Crib (FREE)
  If we needed to at this point, we would have cut down the parts to fit the doorway, or built it from scratch using the parts.
• Spray paint (FREE)
  We had white spray paint on hand. It wasn’t necessarily needed, it was a nice color, but this one had stickers that just would not come off cleanly, so it needed to be re-finished.
• Two hinges ($2.75 at Home Depot–similar here)
• One door latch ($1 at Home Depot —similar here)

A bonus of getting the whole crib is that we now also have a (free) headboard for our guest bed, another side piece that we’ll eventually use to add another matching gate to the hallway, and the whole front panel, which we’re not sure how we’ll use yet, but we’ll figure something out.

Oh, and if you happen to find a free or cheap crib online, many of them come with mattresses included, which make perfect large dog beds.

Here is a picture with the other side of the crib for reference. The left is the part “before.” So we just turned it on it’s side, trimmed the new “top” down and removed the drawer slide.

Another unexpected bonus is that the Roomba can now also vacuum the entryway. Which is very exciting for me.

Other updates we’ve made to the room so far are actual curtains(!) (also from FB Marketplace for $10), and we swapped out the light fixture.

The light fixture we had purchased a year-and-a-half ago for the family room and didn’t end up using it because the light it gave off wasn’t enough for the room, so it’s been sitting in a closet for all that time. (It’s this one from IKEA.)

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The dogs have been banished to the closet.  Our Golden boy isn’t a fan of confined spaces, but our Bernese girl loves them, so we thought she would love a bed in the closet and he wouldn’t be much of a fan.  Of course, it’s the exact opposite.  They both fit in the bed, and they’re both happier when they’re cuddling, so we’re sure once she gets used to it, she’ll love it as much as he does.

Moving them into the empty closet has freed up SO MUCH space in the bedroom.

Anyway…  The bed is made out of two 3/4″ MDF boards cut to fit right into the closet.  We wanted to do two boards instead of one so it would be easy to put into the closet, and easy to move if we need to.

There are 8 legs (4 on each board), they are the IKEA Capita legs (that’s a link to the 4″ because apparently, they don’t sell the 6″ ones that we used anymore–there are some 6″ available on Amazon though.  They are the same legs that are on the shelf on the other side of the closet.

The MDF base is currently topped with 5 layers of egg crate foam that used to be our mattress topper.  I’m still waffling on whether to keep that or try something different.  It’s nice and cushy, (maybe too cushy, as you can see) but the layers will have to be sewn together.  The edges aren’t perfect either, and it shows.  I’m planning on sewing a cover for it out of the fabric that’s laid on top of it now (it’s actually a rug from Five Below, they don’t have it online but it’s just a different pattern of this one).

And we have one shelf up above the bed for extra storage.  I’m considering another faceout for my blouses like we have for the Hubs’ suits on the left, but I’m still waffling on that too.  2 more weeks of the One Room Challenge to make the decisions and get it done!

And yes, the dogs get pillows.  The Roscoe LOVES pillows.  This is how excited he has always gotten over pillows:

A post shared by Christina Orleans (@christinaleans) on Aug 18, 2014 at 2:23pm PDT

Click here to browse all the other One Room Challenge participants!

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Week three already of the One Room Challenge…only two weeks to go to finish our bedroom, and several projects still need to be tackled.  But we have the open closet that we love so much again.

Apparently, I have lost the “before” photos, but they looked like any other closet: a single metal rod and a shelf above it.  The shelves were too high to be very useful for 5′ me…I usually just ended up throwing things up there and hoping they landed.  And they each had two sliding doors.

Of course, we removed the doors first, then the tracks (still have one upper track to take down in the right closet).

Then we put up the shelves and the Hubs hung the rod with some rope.

We need a tiny bit more shelf space, as you can see on top of the dresser:

So we’re putting another shelf up in the right closet, and maybe a face-out for my dresses or sweaters too.  The dogs’ sofa is shoved into the closet until we get their replacement built and set up.  That should be next week’s post.  But you never know with me.

The light had the typical pull cord, and it was original, so it was a little yellow and stiff, and of course, not very pretty.  So it got replaced with pink paper beads.  It was actually a long necklace that I never wore anymore, but here, we get to use it daily!

I was originally hoping to remove the trim, center divider and cut back the walls so it was just a clean, flush cut out, but that was too much of a project at the moment.  Hopefully in the future!

The closet still needs some tweaking and some styling, but we’re so happy to have it open again like the last house.

And hopefully next week I’ll have some quality photos to share too…after we moved back home, I put my camera battery in a very safe and logical place.  Apparently too safe and not as logical as I thought.  So they’ve all been taken with my phone for a couple weeks.    If you were me, where would you have put a camera battery?

Click here to browse all the other One Room Challenge participants!

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There have been people sharing this on the internet for years.  The first time I heard of someone putting contact paper on a countertop, I simultaneously thought it was an awesome and horrible idea.  There seemed to be no way it would last or look decent.  But it was so cheap and crafty it also sounded great.

When we rented the 1920s house a few months ago, it was the PERFECT time to give it a try myself though.  Not only would it just cost a few dollars, but there was no way I could use the countertops in our rental as they were.

Here is half of the kitchen for reference (these are the only countertops in the kitchen):

Why we put contact paper on our countertops

Get ready for some gross:

Now, technically, they were “clean,” I suppose.  They had been scrubbed before we moved in and I sure scrubbed them again after we moved in.  Still, there was absolutely no way I was preparing food on them.

Since this was just a temporary rental and I needed a very quick fix, I didn’t go with the higher quality contact paper that I would if it were my own house or a longer-term rental.  I picked up Con-Tact brand blue granite. (affiliate links)

How to apply it

It was so easy to cover the counters.  As you can see in the pictures, the tiles were REALLY uneven and several of them were broken.

I cut a piece to fit and then notched out around all of the supports.  The paper wasn’t deep enough to go all the way to the back of the counter, but the great part about the granite pattern was that you couldn’t even see the seams when you were looking for them.  So I just cut long strips to cover the back.

Then I just peeled a portion of the backing off and started placing it.  I did get the placement slightly off the first time or two, and I was afraid that the paper wouldn’t stick as well if I peeled it back up, but it did great.  It peeled up easily and stayed in place when I re-stuck it in a better position.  This would have gone a little easier with two people (and pictures would have been better too).

Here was the first third covered:

You can see how uneven the tiles are under the contact paper, but I imagine for 90% + of rentals, the countertops aren’t this bad. 

Because the tiles hung over the edge of the countertop by wildly varying amounts, I ended up not wrapping the contact paper around the front.  It just never would have stuck.

Here is the finished product:

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Covering the countertops with contact paper took about 30 minutes from start to finish, and only cost $6.  So, SO worth it!

We lived with it for three months and were not gentle with it.  Even with all the bumps and gaps between the tiles, there was no peeling at all.

When we were moving out, it peeled off very easily too and left no residue behind.  It couldn’t have been easier.

So…I highly recommend covering your countertops with contact paper if you need a quick fix.

The higher quality is great for longer-term fixes or a pricier look, but it is more expensive and takes a little more time and care to apply.

The less expensive is really affordable, and perfect if there’s a pattern that matches your kitchen or bathroom. It’s super fast to install and remove.

Or search for your own look here:

Happy countertop fixing!

Update: I ended up doing this 2 more times, once as a more permanent solution with the high-quality DC Fix brand paper, and again in our current home with the cheap stuff. You just can’t go wrong.
If you have any questions, just ask below!

FAQs about contact paper on tile countertops:

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As is often the case in houses with plaster walls, at some point, instead of repairing or replacing them, the previous homeowners put 60s/70s paneling over them.

Now, I am not one that blanket hates 1970s paneling. I just believe it belongs in a 1970s house, not a 1920s Craftsman.

Thankfully they didn’t do a bad job of putting up the paneling in this house, but it’s still paneling, and it made me twitch. So I was left with the question: how do you make paneling NOT look like paneling until you can do a full restoration?

Fill in the grooves!

It’s not a difficult job, it’s just a slow job.

Before I could fill in the grooves though, I had to sand the walls.  For some reason, the walls in the whole room were a very rough, sandy texture.  Rough as in, I think they were painted with that outdoor, non-skid floor paint.  We’re not totally sure, but that’s our best guess.

Here’s how to fill in the grooves of paneling:

I’m in the middle of that process here: first coat is almost done, then I’ll be doing the second one tomorrow.

Before my walls here can be painted, I’ll have to prime and paint the big foam-paneled ceiling.    By the time I make it through that giant project, I will probably have made it through an entire audio book.  But it will look SO MUCH BETTER once it’s done.

Early last week, I still had no idea what color we’d want on the walls, so I put up a few paint samples.  They’re all colors we really like (in fact, the living room and kitchen were just painted the top left color), but they all just looked terrible in this room.  We really wanted something with warmer undertones, so I brought up the paint I bought for the office just to see what it would look like (top right), and we both loved it in here.

It’s a very subtle stone color. In the morning, it’s a creamy white, in afternoon sun, it’s almost light pink, and in the shade it’s a light, warm purple.  (It happens to be the same color as the powder room, and living room and dining room ceilings of our Victorian.)

Sorry for the ugly photos, there hasn’t been time to take decent ones.  But it will make the “After” photos look even better, right?

So that’s where we’re at!  Hopefully by next Thursday, the ceiling, walls and trim will all filled, patched, repaired, and repainted!

Helpful?
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So generally in our house, it goes like this: I come up with a crazy renovation idea.  The Hubs sighs and/or thinks it’s awesome.  Then he, being an engineer, gets straight to the logic and maths and facts and all the other things that take up too much time and could be skipped that will make the ideas actually functional.

So, we sit down and brainstorm and sketch together, and then we get to work.  He leads in building the structures and foundations (like framing, drywalling, demo, electrical, plumbing, etc.) and I assist.  Then when he’s at work the next day (or over following months), I plan and carry out the finishes like trim, moulding, painting, etc.

This latest project was no different.

Behold, our DIY sliding-door butler’s pantry:

Yes, you’re right, it’s not a butler’s pantry at all, it just sound fancy, so that’s what I call it.  It’s just a closet/pantry/built-in china cabinet in the dining room.

So, if you remember, from once upon a time when I blogged: our dining room is huge in scale compared to the rest of the house.  In the 1890s when the house was built, it was the combo kitchen and dining room.

We didn’t need that much room and it was pretty out-of-balance for this small house.

One thing I love about the new pantry is that we made it level with the weird fridge box that’s in the middle of the kitchen.  So now the fridge box doesn’t look as strange!

If you remember, there was just a wall there before where we put our china cabinet and buffet:

So for the technicalities:

• We framed it out, just like you would do any wall. 
• The Hubs procured kits for installing sliding closet doors, along with 8 foot pieces of high-quality plywood to trim down to size for each door. 
• We hung a shelving system similar to this (affiliate link) and employed our old trick of using stair treads as shelves because they’re more substantial, and just prettier.

He cut the doors to fit, and then I trimmed them with cedar planks we had leftover from another project. I used wood glue and a brad nailer. Then caulked all the seams and primed and painted. 

The side panel was drywalled and mudded. Then everything was painted the same blue as the walls. 

And inside:

I’ve been taking updated photos of the house as we’re finishing up ALL of our unfinished projects.  (Literally, our list of work left for the house is officially down to 33 small items.)  So expect more updates in the coming weeks.

Save to home board on Pinterest!

Just hover over the image and click “Pin”

The post Building a built-in sliding-door pantry appeared first on Little Victorian.

We actually have a couple projects to share.  In the last couple months, we replaced the kitchen flooring and built a bench over the radiator.  Here is where we started over a year ago:

The lovely original hardwoods throughout the first floor had been covered in layer after layer of plywood and linoleum.  The orange “wood” laminate was the top layer.  When we pulled up all the layers in the dining room, the kitchen floor looked even uglier.  It was real, beautiful, cool-colored, old hardwood next to shiny orange fake stuff.

So we pulled up the kitchen floor too.  We couldn’t go all the way down to the original wood for several reasons, but we took it down to the lowest practical layer and then laid the new flooring.  Because of time and budget constraints, along with the fact that we’re not planning on staying in this home for much longer, we went with peel-and-stick tiles.  And we’re actually very happy with our decision.

The big tall radiator cover that was there was silly, since the radiator itself was only a matter of inches tall.  So I asked Hubs if we could build a bench over it and make better use of the space.  I drew my general idea, he did the hard part of designing it, and we built it.

And here it is today:

He did amazing work.  It’s really strong, it doesn’t block any of the heat, and I think it looks great.

We are also adding large baseboards, caps, and quarter-round to match what was in the house originally.

Still to do:

* Touch up the paint
* Add baseboard behind bench
* Install quarter-round and baseboard cap
* Paint baseboards
* Make cushions for the bench
* Bring the table back in
* Have a finished kitchen? Maybe?

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The base cabinets in our kitchen looked horrible.  It wasn’t the cabinets themselves, it was the finish.  As with much of the house, their paint job was pretty terrible.  It was streaky and bumpy, which made lots of grooves for oils and dirt to collect, and they were badly stained all around the handles.  Which meant it always looked dirty, no matter how much I scrubbed.

I wanted something darker anyway.  The color they were painted was very similar to the wall color and it made the room look pretty flat and dull.

So I painted them Martha Stewart’s Zinc (which you can’t get color cards for anymore) but it’s a nice rich slate gray, in a semi-gloss finish.

Once again, I texted Dad, and asked the best way to paint over a badly painted cabinets in a semi-gloss finish.  I was quite surprised when he said to wet sand them.  But the results were amazing.  It smoothed all the bumps right out and left a nice, flat finish.

Of course, I removed all the hardware and took all the doors and drawers outside.  To sand, I took a sanding sponge, dunked it in water, squeezed out the excess, and lightly sanded everything.  The sanding block had to be rinsed out several times during the process.  (Very important note if you are going to try this: make sure that you put a drop cloth down, because the wet sanding re-activates the paint, and it will drip.)

There was a film left on the doors after sanding, but since mine were completely sealed with at least 4 coats of paint, I just rinsed them off with the hose and dried them with old towels.  The cabinets themselves took a little more work since I couldn’t just hose them down.  I didn’t get the sanding block quite as wet and then once they were sanded, I wiped them down twice with damp cloths.

To repaint, I brushed in all of the corners and then rolled on the rest with a 4-inch foam paint roller (similar to this).  Love the easy changes that make such a big difference!  There were a couple more changes I made, but forgot to photograph them.  I’ll tell you about then next week!

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