I wish I had a digital version of what the kitchen used to look like, and what it now looks like because the change is very dramatic. One of the highlights of the new kitchen is the new custom tongue and groove cabinets that were built. Here is an example of what they look like.
Unfortunately, there was one large set of cabinets directly above the stove that were built some years ago that do not look anything like these new ones. You can imagine how happy Chelsea was to have two different styles of cabinet in the same room. See for yourself how different they look:
We decided that in our spare time (HA!) we would go ahead and refinish the old cabinets to make them match the new ones. We came up with a plan and I’ll give you a brief visual guide of the process.
Step 1: take cabinets apart, remove the old hardware, and strip the dark finish.
Step 2: Cut 1/4” boards to fit on the front of the doors to make them resemble the tongue and groove ones. Then we had to assemble, sand, stain and put a finishing coat on them.
The final step was to put on the matching new hardware, and then hang the doors. I guess for the sake of brevity I skipped about 20 steps in there, because there is no way it only took 2 steps to refinish those cabinets. Anyway you can see the final product below.
Scroll up to see what they looked like originally, and then up a little more to see what we tried to make them look like. I’m pretty proud of our work.
..:: NJ Brideau ::.. 
I really like what you did with the cabinet doors?
That, my friend, is what we call a “marked improvement”. Nice work.
I really like the fact that “Chels” is doing construction work with no goggles or shoes on. That is very Ziehmer-like.