Kitchen cabinet mini-makeover

Last spring, we finally finished our kitchen makeover. YAY! It felt like it took forever – come to think of it, it DID take forever! But it was worth the wait, because I’m thrilled with how it came out:

I love everything about it, but there’s one small detail that I’ve been wanting to address. There are three cabinets with glass doors:

I had originally planned to frost the glass, because I’m not crazy about how the cabinets look inside. We tried frosting one door, but I wasn’t happy with how it came out. So we removed the frosting and I decided to try prettying up the insides of the cabinets instead. I really like the look of cabinets and bookshelves with a painted back. So I thought about painting the backs of the cabinets red, or maybe metallic copper.

Girl Meets Glamour

And then Atticmag came to my rescue! A few months ago, they had a giveaway for a new backsplash material from 1005 Design. It comes in six different designs in either stainless steel or copper. Yes! The perfect solution!

So I entered the giveaway, and was lucky enough to be one of the winners :-) Weeehooo! I selected the brushed copper, because I wanted the look to be subtle and not take away from the backsplash. Here’s what we started with – definitely some room for improvement!

 

The kit from 1005 Design included enough copper to cover the three cabinet backs (I sent the measurements, 1005 Design calculated the amount required) and three tubes of adhesive (we ended up needing four tubes). We’d already used one tube when I realized I should have taken a picture of what came in the kit.

Because the product is designed for backsplashes (which are typically 18”), the copper comes in 18” x 30” sheets. We ran the sheets vertically, and were able to hide some of the seams behind the shelves.

The instructions say to cut the copper by scoring it a few times with an Exacto knife and then bending it along the scored line till it snaps. Hubby was impressed by how easy the copper was to cut, and that he able to cut a piece as narrow as 1/2”.

We dry-fit the cut sheets before applying the adhesive, just to be sure!

I applied the adhesive following the instructions. As I mentioned, we needed to buy one extra tube. But knowing me, I was probably squeezing on a bit more than I was supposed to.

The adhesive is spread across the back of the sheet, and then it’s ready to install.

First sheet attached to the back of the smaller cabinet.

Here’s the larger cabinet before:

And voila, the final result!

The seam in the center isn’t noticeable at all when the doors are closed, which is 99% of the time :-) And the horizontal seam is totally hidden by the bottom shelf.

 

Here’s the smaller cabinet:

A semi-artysy shot ;-)

The corner cabinet was a bit complicated because of the row of holes down the back for adjusting the shelf height. Hubby created a template to mark the hole locations on the sheet of copper, and then he used a modified spade drill to drill the holes.

  

And that’s it, our kitchen cabinet mini-makeover. Thanks to Atticmag and 1005 Design for the opportunity to try out this new backsplash product. Just because a product is designed for one use, doesn’t mean you can’t modify it for another use :-)

Linking up to Metamorphosis Monday, hosted by Susan at Between Naps on the Porch. Be sure to check out more of this week’s makeovers at Susan’s place.