Spend Your Time Wisely

I have decided to tackle updating our kitchen cabinets. What started out a simple repaint turned into a much bigger project. Upon close inspection of the cabinets we could see that they had already been coated with at least three heavy layers of paint. So, the stripping began. After spending several hours on the messy stripping of just four of the doors (there are 22 doors total) and seeing that I would still need to sand to get what remained of the original layer of varnish, I knew that there had to be a more efficient option.

The truth is that I don’t really like the design of the current doors anyway so why, I ask myself, am I putting this much effort into maintaining something that I don’t even want. That question seemed so insightful to me. How much time and energy do we spend maintaining a life that we don’t even want?

We should all have love and gratitude for these lives that we have been given. Celebrate each day for the gift that it is and sustain the beauty of it. We all to often convince ourselves that it is necessary to do a whole lot of things that do not bring us any joy at all. We force ourselves through life with a ‘must do’ list in hand. We have been trained to be almost righteous in this way of being. Martyrs, suffocating the joy out of life for the belief that we must suffer all things.

I am so thankful for this project. It is giving me a fresh prospective as well as a freshly updated kitchen.

Back to a more material note, I will still be utilizing the stained glass that is in the upper doors. I will be building a more shaker style door rather than the scalloped edge ones that were on there. I am attaching a couple pictures below to show what I am starting with and will update you when I have completed the doors.

As promised, here is a picture of the updated upper cabinet with glass. I am very pleased with how it turned out. So glad that I decided to remake the doors.

Here is another update on the ongoing kitchen cabinet makeover. I have discovered a third of the way through that a heat gun works SO much better for removing the paint on this project. I was getting so frustrated with the messy stripper. As of yesterday the last of the upper cabinets are stripped. The stained glass has been removed from the old doors and cleaned and the search is on for a person who can repair one of the stained glass panels. Things are coming along nicely although not a quickly as I would have liked. Some how other things need done too, go figure.

I am enjoying the process though and am excited about the new woodworking skills I have acquired on this project. Below are a couple pictures of the end result from stripping with the heat gun. So much quicker and cleaner in my opinion.