Staining the Kitchen Cabinet.

Stain the cabinet

I got the cabinet sanded down this week and Haley and Brandon came over to look at it last night and loved it! I started on the stain today and it looks so good! Haley asked me to beat up and distress the edges of the drawers so I took a hammer and went to work. It went against everything in me to beat on something I built but I really like the way it looks. It’s not really noticeable unless you know to look for it but it’s a nice touch.

Before stain. We are going to put a piece of board at the bottom so you can’t see the supports and under the cabinet but we are waiting until we cut the 1/4 in plywood for the back and use a strip of that.

After stain.

More Counter top information

This post is a little more detailed about the counter top process.

More projects

When I talked to Haley about building the cabinet she told me she wanted to put butcher block counter tops on the other areas in the kitchen with the sink and a little eat in area. She wanted it stained the dark walnut to match the cabinet but we knew it wouldn’t be exactly the same since the wood tones started out so different. Since the wood in the cabinet was already so dark and had a red tone to it it took the stain really dark. The butcher block is a lot lighter so it’s not taking as dark. I had to cut out the whole for the sink and cut a couple of notches out of the counter top to fit around a wall so that took some time. The butcher blocks come with a factory oil finish and it took me forever to get that sanded off. I wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult and because it was oily it kept gumming up my good sander and I had to stop often to clean it out. 

Before I cut the sink hole

I’m using the cabinet as one of my work tables because I needed an extra one. I really just need to get some saw horses.

Everything set up and ready to stain. And our big pile of boxes that needed to go out for recycling. They are out of the way now.

After 2 coats of stain. It’s going to take me a while to get this done because it takes so long for stain to dry and since this will be at the sink it needs extra coats of Waterlox sealer. I found out about waterlox when doing research on the best sealer to use on counter tops, 2 other blogs I found has used it and a couple of years later their countertops were still in great shape. I want to put at least 5 or 6 coats of waterlox with 12 hours of dry time between coats. (I mentioned in my other post that I wasn’t in love with Waterlox and I wouldn’t use it again. That’s just my personal opinion and it doesn’t seem like others had the same issues with it that I did.)

And a couple of before pictures of Haley and Brandon’s kitchen so you can get an idea of how awesome it’s going to look after!

This is where the cabinet will go soon!

I’m really excited to see it all finished soon. I’m hoping we can get it done next week so it will all be finished by Thanksgiving!

Tool Time

Haley let me know that my blog would be included in the feature about her kitchen so I decided to copy and paste some of my posts from my old blog over to this one since I didn’t have time to rewrite everything. The counter tops and cabinet were built when I was married so I did edit a few things in those posts to remove the guilty so to speak.  

A post about getting started on the kitchen cabinet.

Tool Time

I bought a table saw! It was an exciting day for me! A girl that lives in our neighborhood read my blog and saw the projects that I have worked on and asked up to build a cabinet for her kitchen that they are remodeling. After meeting with her and seeing what we had in mind I knew we would be able to get it done and I was excited. On Sat Haley and I went up to Cullman, AL  to Southern Accents and they had some of the coolest stuff! I knew they had a lot of reclaimed wood but I thought it was all off site in a huge gym so we were surprised to see they have a wood shop on site and a bunch of wood in the back. The owner was out at the gym with other customers so we had to wait for him to get back to the store to give us prices and cut the wood down so it would fit in my car. We got a fantastic deal on the wood for the face of the cabinet because Haley wanted rough reclaimed wood. The rest of the frame we built with plywood to save money and make sure it was very sturdy.

The new toy. It matches my miter saw.


Three drawers on each side and doors in the middle.

The wood needs to be cleaned up but it’s really pretty. I can’t wait to see if finished!

Kitchen Counter tops

When I lived in Birmingham I had the pleasure of working with a couple in my neighborhood that were in the process of remodeling their kitchen. I built a large custom kitchen cabinet and refinished butcher block counter tops. Haley bought the counter tops from Ikea in Atlanta and brought them to me to work on. I did a lot of research before I got started and all the blogs made it seem so easy…. oh just sand it a little to get the factory coat off and then stain it and bam! you are done. Not so much. I don’t know if I had unreal expectations of how thick the factory oil coat would be or what but I sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded some more!!! I have a really good sander and I’m very thankful since I spent so much time using it. Once I got the factory finish off I started measuring everything over and over again to make sure all my cuts were perfect. I had to cut both pieces down to size, cut out the hole for the sink and faucet, and cut out a little notch to fit around a place on the wall. I had to make all the cuts perfect because if my measurements were off it would have messed everything up.

You can really see how dark the cabinet is compared to the natural wood on the counter tops in this picture. This is also before the hardware was added to the cabinet drawers and doors.

Starting the staining process. And the is the other side of the counter top that attaches to the piece with the sink. I used Minwax Special Walnut oil based stain. I ended up putting on 3 coats with at least 12 hours of drying time between coats.

I used a sealer that I had read about on 2 other blogs and they seemed to really like it but I wasn’t impressed. I’ve used a number of different poly’s on other projects and to me this stuff was the hardest to keep smooth. I had to sand it a lot between coats and I felt like it left streaks no matter what I applied it with. I ended up doing about 6 coats of sealer before I was completely happy with the way it looked and I let them dry at least 12 hours in between. I only did 2 coats of sealer on the bottom of the counter tops and I did that first so I wouldn’t have to worry about being so careful with them when I flipped it over to do the top.

The whole project was an adventure since it wasn’t something I’ve ever taken on before but I loved it!! I am so happy with the way the counter tops came out and I would absolutely do it again. Actually I hope to remodel a kitchen of my own in the future and install stained butch block counter tops because I like it so much.

Matters of the heart.

I started this post at the end of Jan and never went back to it. I think I'm ready to finish it now.


The heart is a funny thing, it keeps you alive, when it stops beating or beats irregularly, or really does anything unusual it can throw everything into a tail spin. Your heart can break when you are sad and it can feel like it's full when you are loved and happy. My heart has hurt a lot this year. It started when my husband told me he didn't want a wife anymore. It felt like my heart had been ripped out and stomped on and I have been trying to patch it back up and with lots of bandaids and some super glue it was doing pretty good. On Thursday my dad had his second heart attack and when my mom got the call if felt like my heart stopped then it started racing. All I could think about is the what ifs..... We had no other info than he was in the hospital and we were terrified. I can't imagine living without my daddy. I'm so thankful that they had him in the cath lab so quickly and he was in and out of surgery in 20 mins and there was no heart damage. My heart started to heal in Feb but took more of a beating at Valentines than I was expecting. I took a lot of the orders and when the guys would say things like "Love you forever.." I wanted to say "REALLY??? Are you sure because my husband used to say that too and then he changed his mind". My heart hurt and the new scabs were ripped off and salt was rubbed in the open wounds. After Valentines I got a new job and it did my heart good. I needed some validation that I was worth hiring that I was worth keeping around. I started out as a temp worker and they liked me so much they found another job for me. Now I'm doing more and being given more responsibility the longer I stay. They are encouraging me to go back to school and are making sure my schedule is super flexible so I can do all the things I need to do with my personal life. It's the perfect job for me with wonderful people. My heart started to really heal. Through therapy and surrounding myself with family and friends that support me and love me no matter what my heart is in a better place than it's been in a very long time. I realize now just how tender my heart was even while I was still married. N hadn't been taking care of it for a long time and it was so lonely. Now I still have my moments that a memory will make me pause and it will hurt but it's not the stabbing pain that I felt in Jan and it's not the deep ache that I felt in Feb, it's a light throb and then it fades away as quickly as it hit. I will never be the same person that I was last year. I will never be that Heather again. I am stronger and smarter and I'm starting to believe in myself in ways I never did before. I'm beginning to see what everyone else saw but I turned a blind eye too. It's a good feeling. It makes my heart happy.

Whoaaaa there time, slow down!

It's the middle of March! WOW, Jan was the slowest month in the history of ever and pretty much the shittiest one you could imagine but Feb and March are flying by!!! I'm getting into a routine with work and now I'm throwing the gym into the mix, by the time I get that all under control I'll be throwing school in and I don't know if I'll ever get a good routine! I don't know how people do this with kids. HOW??? I feel like I never see the dogs, half the time mama feeds them before I get home from the gym and then it's time to help with dinner then eat then do dishes and I don't make it upstairs until almost 9. This is a far cry from the life I was used to and to be honest I miss it!! I miss not having to worry about working and keeping a set schedule. I hate mornings and I don't think I'll ever ever ever ever like getting up before 9 or 10 am. I hate being on eastern time again and I REALLY hate the stupid time change. I would like to personally kick the guy who convinced everyone this was a good idea in the balls.

So that's my life... work work work... gym.... time with friends!

I am going to Rucker this weekend and I'm very excited to see my girls for a reason other than packing up my house. Should be a lot of fun!

Still chugging along.

I haven't really been in the blogging mood lately. Everything has been super busy the entire month of Feb and by the time I sit down to play on the computer I really don't have anything to say on here. Valentines was great at the shop, we were very busy and also had a ton of funeral work at the same time that made for a late, late, late night before Vday. I did paperwork the rest of the week and then on Mon started a temporary job taping paper to folders. It's super hard and requires so much brain power that if Kady had thumbs she could totally do it. I'm not complaining, it's a job and I'll get paid real money. Hopefully enough to cover bills for a few months. I'm thankful that my bills aren't very much so I'm in a really hard place yet. I'm still hoping that magical full time job will find me soon. I'm still putting applications out there but no bites yet.