Update Builder Grade Cabinets Without Painting
Okay I need to start this post with a very clear caveat: We cannot paint our cabinets, and we cannot stain our cabinets. Ahhh… that feels better to get that out in the open first thing. Okay, so the reason that is the first thing in bold red text, is because I know I am going to get comments “Why don’t you just paint your cabinets?” BUT our Realtor advised us not to paint because we decided to rent our home and not sell it. And rental homes/cabinets get beat up, but it shows less with wood than paint, she knows this from LOTS of experience. AND we only had 4 weeks to finish our entire house, there technically wasn’t time anyway.
Sidenote: Since I feature a lot of painted kitchen remodels, I get a LOT of comments about how people can’t paint their cabinets, usually a spouse is not okay with painting for one reason or another. So this post will hopefully show you that you can update the look of your cabinets without painting them…
Update Builder Grade Cabinets:
Without Painting
Supplies:
1″ x 6″ Oak, or matching lumber in needed length (see diagram below)
Oak Crown Molding (we used vinyl composite oak look moldings)
Pine 5/16″ half round molding, same length as header plus an inch or two. (use oak if available)
Natural Oak Stain (or matching shade to your existing cabinets)
Polyurethane spray paint (or regular polyurethane in matching finish to your cabinets – satin for us)
Scrap blocking wood, for cleats and backing blocks
1. Finish Your Wood
The first thing that we did was stain the new wood to match the existing color of the cabinets. Take your oak 1 x 6, small pine molding and crown (ONLY if real wood) stain them to match the color of your cabinets. It is a good idea to use a small test piece to see if you need one or two coats of stain, check it against your kitchen in the actual space, to make sure it looks right.
Follow the drying instructions on the stain before applying polyurethane to the boards. Spray(or brush) with Polyurethane and allow them to dry. Lightly sand with 250 grit or higher sandpaper and wipe dust away with a tack cloth before you apply a second coat. (You can decide if you need a third coat, a light sanding between coats is a good idea for a professional finish).
2. Measure and cut the boards.
Once they are stained, lacquered and completely dry, cut them to the length of the cabinets. Don’t forget you will need mitered edges on any outside corners, where the two boards meet, to keep it looking professional.
Measurements you will need, the front length of your cabinets (measurement 1 and 3) and you need the return to the wall measurement (4 and 2)
3. Glue and Nail the Header Pieces Together:
It is easiest to secure the molding corners before installing them above your head. Place your wood on a level surface. Then glue and nail the mitered corner of the header together, be sure to keep the corner square. (Piece 1 to 2, be sure to keep the finished side of the wood out)
Because the length of our cabinets was longer than the wood, we did a scarf joint (shown below). Try to place any scarf joints in inconspicuous places. I did mine as close to the wall, above the fridge, to avoid it being noticeable. Once it is placed and cut, glue and nail the joint together. Wipe away any excess glue with a wet rag. Allow glue to dry.
 Mitered Corner Joint |
 Glue and nail corner before installing |
 Scarf joint, miter the edges so they lay flat together |
 Glue and nail together |
4. Nail Cleats to wall
Use 4 small scrap pieces of wood (1″ x 3″ no more than 5 inches tall) as cleats for the header. Set them back the same thickness of your wood on the ends of your “L” shaded header space. Make sure the cleats are level up and down the same as your cabinets.
(Sorry the picture is fuzzy, it is the only one I took! UGH!! So, I created a location image to give you an idea of where these pieces go, below) 
5. Attach the Header to Your Cabinet Top:
Place the header on top of your cabinet. Open the doors to your cabinets and use a clamp or two to hold the header in place. Before tightening the clamps, be sure that you line up the front of the header exactly with the front and side of your cabinet, then tighten clamps to hold the header in place.
Pre-drill holes for screws to avoid spiting wood or breaking drill bits. With the door of your cabinet open, pre-drill a hole straight up through the face frame of your cabinet into the header piece. Screw in a wood screw to hold it in place. Repeat the pre-drill, screw process about every 3 feet, down the length of your cabinets, or where it seems necessary.
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6. Nail the Header Ends to the Cleats
Now that the header is secured to the cabinet body, nail the ends to the cleats near the top of the header. (We nailed where we knew the crown would cover so that no holes were visible)
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This is what they will look like with the headers installed:
If you are piecing the board together. |
For crown moldings . |
Cut the backing blocks from any solid scrap wood, 1×4 or 2×4, like shown below.
When installing the crown it will look like the images below:
 How to piece cove and chair rail molding. |
 For regular crown molding.
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9. Nail Cleats to Header Board
Because we wanted to add as much height as possible to the crown, we installed our cleats to extend above the header board. To make sure they were all level in the easiest way, we held a spacer in place to to set the height of each cleat, and secured the cleat in place with the nail gun. The spacer was not secured, and we used it for each block. See the diagram below. Install cleats about every 2 feet.
10. Install the Moldings
Now just install your moldings. For our project, we started with the cove molding. Miter all outside corners.
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After the cove molding is in place, nail on the chair rail molding and miter the edges around any outside corners. Be sure not to butt joint any seams in the moldings, always do a scarf joint like shown above in the header.
Here is a look of how it is all coming together.
Now just as a reminder, here is the before:
And here is the after shot. I think that it is a big improvement! All told the project took about 4 hours. (not including drying times)
I’ll have the final kitchen tour up in the next few days so please come and check it out! If you want to see where we started, the first few changes, and installing the new back splash tutorial please check out those links. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this project!
I am the husband of the amazing Cassity of Remodelaholic. I love to problem solve and to design and build things inside and outside the house to make life better. I am a professional Landscape Architect by trade and love the outdoors.
Wow! The cabinets look great! I can’t paint mine, either.
Aha, see, I knew it! A lot of people can’t so I guess I hope this gives you an idea of what you can accomplish without paint!
I wish I can put you and your husband in my pocket! You guys did a bang up job!!! Im so going to get my carpenter to do this to my oak cabinets…. To be honest I didn’t think there was hope for these builder grade cabinets…. Whats the name and where did you get your subway tile and hardware from? Thank you for the inspiration!!!!
Home Depot (Daltile 2″ x 4″ subway tile in a 12 x 12 mesh tile
It looks amazing! I love your subway tile back splash too!
Thank you! I was really happy with the outcome!
What an excellent idea! I’ve never thought of this, but the cabinets really do look 100% better!
YAY! I am so happy that you feel that way! it was such a huge improvement for me, but I didn’t know if I was biased, so i love having the positive feedback! THANKS!
Looks wonderful! Thankfully, our kitchen cabinets already have a nice moulding across the top, and the space between the cabinet top and ceiling (where a soffit usually is) is perfect for displaying things like my vintage tin signs, wine I never intend to drink in a pretty bottle holder, etc. I just use old books to raise things up so they look like they’re sitting on top of the cabinet, rather than nestled behind the header!
PS – I love your new hardware. That is one thing we are doing at tax-time. We rent, but any improvements we do are knocked off the next months’ rent, so double-score for us! We are going to install some floating hardwood in the dining area this spring too. I’m sure a man decided it was a good idea to carpet dining areas…
Seriously, I don’t get the idea of carpet in a dining room either, it might work for an adults only home (even then however there are still accidental spills…) Good luck on the new floor that will be a heaven sent change!
Looks great! Amazing how something so simple can have such a big impact. Good work- thanks for sharing.
Your are welcome thanks for telling me what you think!
Your realtor is a smart lady. We painted our cabinets white and rented it out. They are gross looking now. Good choice!
GOOD! I am so glad to hear that (not for your sake, but because a lot of peopel just didn’t understand why I wasn’t painting), I don’t want to have to repaint our cabinets every time we get a new renter! (especially since we not longer live there, and it would be expensive either way to travel there or have it fixed for us!
That looks fantastic. You are so clevedor to figure out how to this with cove and chair moldings. Can’t wait to see the finished project.
Traci
Yay! I need to get on writing that reveal post!
I must admit that I was skeptical that you could improve the cabinets without painting them, but you did a fabuluous job. I’m thoroughly cnvinced now. They look amazing. Great job!!
YAY! I am so glad! I know the color is still obnoxious, but it really isn’t half as bad now that the space looks updated!! I have the reveal (of all the pretty pictures) set for Tuesday morning! So come check it out!
Thanks so much! This is going to help our kitchen a lot!
I Love hearing that! Good Luck!
Late to comment … but have to say I love this look. I love white cabinets too, but with the white subway tile and black accents, the builder-oak cabinets look intentional! Nicely done!
I love this and it has changed my mind on painting ALL of my cabinets in the kitchen. My question is how would you do where 2 cabinets meet in the corner? My dad would be helping me with this but I am not sure how you would do a corner. Ideas…
Okay, we did something like that in our last kitchen. So it is not hard (although maybe a little hard to explain in words, without pictures, but I will do my best)
1. ON the longest section of cabinets, follow the instructions above. (2 cleats on the walls) Only you need to run the first side all the way to the wall behind the corner.
2. Nail that side to a cleats on the wall, like the original plan says.
3. Then once the first piece of oak is in place, you need to add a cleat for the cabinet corner to that piece of oak. Set the cleat back just the width of the wood piece you will be putting perpendicular to that board, on top of your other cabinet. Nail the cleat in place.
4.Now butt the edge of the next piece up to the first piece and nail it to the cleat you just applied to the front of the oak. And the other end nail to the cleat on the wall!
Hope that makes sense, since I don’t have a way to take pictures this is about as good as it gets!
Good Luck with your kitchen!
Cassity
WOWZA what a difference the molding makes! Stunning and gorgeous even with the oak 🙂
We did this to ours as well and am so glad we did! Your tutorial is fabulous
XO
Kristin
Kristin, your kitchen makeover is one of my favorite blogger’s projects of all time! AMAZING! I wish we could have painted ours but i am really happy with how they turned out!
Wow! Completely transforming! Great idea. I LOVE it!
Thanks so much Jen!
The cabinets look great! I think the wood looks nice and refreshing to see a non white kitchen. They are getting pretty predictable and boring in makeovers.
Thanks Cara!
Awesome idea! Not sure how I missed this one. Looks perfect.
Thanks John!
Looks great but we are in an apartment with 9′ ceilings and extremely small and low cabinets. I’m trying to figure out how this might work for them.
Maybe you could raise the cabinets up, install the crown, and install an open shelf below? Like this one: https://www.domesticimperfection.com/2013/01/open-kitchen-shelving/.
Good luck! And we’d love to see pictures of what you end up doing!
This is a old blog.
But What type of Lighting system is that in the pictures?
Did you not refinish the cabinets? The color looks a little lighter and less golden. Or is that just lighting? I agree the mounding makes a big difference!
Thanks, Jan! Lighting and a good cleaning 🙂
Thank you so much for this. I have builder grade oak cabinets and they need help. I may paint them, but this header and crown is a must.
This cove/cornice tutorial is PERFECT for what I need right now!
Thank You SO MUCH.
You’re welcome! Send us pictures wen you’re done! 🙂