Well guys, we’re officially done to one project left in the giant, never-ending kitchen renovation project. Last night, Wyatt finished up the touch up paint on the new cabinet trim while I had a call for work and let me tell you, it looks fantastic, if we do say so ourselves, which we do.

Kitchen Cabinet Trim Done 3

The whole goal of the trim was to cover some of the rough edges and imperfections from the rest of the renovation. We had some caps between the cabinets and the ceiling because you can’t hang cabinets directly touching the ceiling unless your ceiling is super-duper straight and square, which I’m guessing it isn’t. So, you’re left with a little gap, or a big gap if you hang your cabinets lower…

Kitchen Cabinet Trim Before 2

We went with as small of a gap as possible so we could have the most storage space possible. Which meant we only had room for a tiny piece of trim rather than some chunky crown molding or something bigger like that.

We decided to use a 1×2 board for our trim, and Wyatt cut it down to fit perfectly to match our very unsquare ceilings, so it ranged from around 1/5 inches to .75 inches. He used some scrap blocks to help test his measurements.

Kitchen Cabinet Trim Before

That seems like a big difference, and it is, but when it’s all attached to the ceiling and painted to perfectly match the cabinets, the difference in sizes isn’t very noticeable at all unless you know to look for it.

Kitchen Cabinet Trim Done 2

We also had some trim to install along the base of the cabinets in the nook area because there wasn’t any toe-kick there and we needed something to cover the small gap we had to leave when we installed the new wood flooring.

Floor Trim Kitchen Before

For that, Wyatt ripped a 1X2 in half and then rounded the edges with his router so give it a softer look and less of a dust-catching edge along the top.

Kitchen floor trim building

 

For the corners, he angled them off so there wasn’t a square, blunt edge sticking out.

Kitchen Floor Trim Done

I think it blends in with the baseboard trim really well, even though we didn’t want to use that trim exactly because it was way too thick, and too tall for the space.

Kitchen Floor Trim Done 3

 

He did this all around the custom nook cabinet as well.

Kitchen Floor Trim Done 2

We also had a couple pieces of trim to add in the stairway to finish up the built in bookcase trim.

Built In Bookshelves Back Gap

He used the same trim from the kitchen floor (which I just described above) and cut a couple pieces to cover that gap.

Stairway Trim Done

We found this area to be really frustrating, because not only is the wall not straight (there’s a huge bulge in it that makes the trim really uneven), but it also had so many existing layers of trim to work around. Crazy. But, we ended up coming up with a solution that worked.

Wyatt also had to do a little carpet work in this area, leftover from the flooring project. We were missing the carpet from the first riser (We had to remove it down to the first stair when we added the wood flooring. At first, we were stumped with how to cover the bare wood that was left…but we ended up just deciding to nail up a small piece since we plan to remove/replace the carpet on these stairs in the next few years anyway.

stairway carpet fix 2

Ta-da!

stairway carpet fix

He had to make a special piece of trim to fit around the rounded edge of our wood flooring trim piece, too. I’m telling you, so much custom work….so frustrating.

stairway trim building

Luckily, he’s a rockstar when it comes to woodworking. And caulk hides a multitude of sins on painted trim. Ha!

(Yes, we know we need to do something with the horribly scuffed wood stair trim, too. It’s probably going to eventually be white as well.)

Stairway Trim Done 2

Luckily, this was a pretty quick project and we were able to do the entire thing in a week. Now all that’s left is the new lights over the dining room table! Woohoo–the kitchen is going to be finished before the baby gets here…which was the ultimate deadline.  No matter that we missed being done by Thanksgiving, and Christmas…and April 1…we’re still getting it finished. And that’s what counts, right?

As we wrap up the final touches (we still have some decorating and such to do as well) we will be sharing some overview posts about our cost break down on the entire project and how we’ve managed to do this huge project by ourselves. Sorry if you’be been bored by all these tedious trim updates. That’s just how we’ve found the ends of projects to be…lots of finishing touches that a lot of people gloss over. Since we try to be honest about all our projects, we figured it was better to tell you just how time-consuming, but rewarding, all these little last-minute steps can be. Don’t worry, we’re hoping to tackle bigger projects (nursery!!) soon.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to a weekend of progress…hopefully we’ll be able to see the walls in our garage by Sunday night at bedtime. And maybe even have a way to consistently park both cars in there!

What are your weekend plans? I’d love to hear what’s going on with you guys!

8 Thoughts on “Another Kitchen Project = DONE!”

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