Kitchen Cabinet Plan du Jour

My kitchen plan is morphing. My in-expensive makeover was going to be to remove all the doors from my cabinets, add vertical dividers to make "cubbies" and then paint it all a great tomato-y orangey red color.

As a first step towards that, and to see if I would actually LIKE the open concept, last weekend I removed the doors and hardware from the upper cabinets on my sink side of the kitchen. Oooooh! I love the openness -- what do you think? And I am surprised how much I like not having to open cabinet doors to get to things -- that's sort of a weird thing that I hadn't considered.



I think it really does give it a more open feeling. Now -- this isn't the final product -- don't worry I am not THAT crazy. But now I think I am going to take out the cabinets all together, and paint the wall that same tomato orangey-red color, but in a high gloss. And then put up white horizonal melamine shelving. I see it being about an inch thick, so that it looks substantial. And the red will end where the shelves end, not extend past them to around the window and over the chest freezer. I've priced the shelving, and it isn't expensive. I haven't chosen a brace design yet, but there is a handful of inexpensive ones out there.

I am sure that I will need to do some kind of wall texturing, or patching or something after the cabinets come down, before I paint. I'll just have to see what type of surface I am left with. And I will need to get a new piece of wooden butcher block because when the cabinets come out, it will need to extend all the way back to the wall. I'm also sure that this project will be more complicated than I am anticipating, but I'm okay with that. At least I am going in with those expectations, right?

I have a good idea or two for the doors on the bottom cabinets, (thanks to someone with long red hair.) And I have three more, different types of cabinets (?!) on the other side of my kitchen that I haven't exactly figured out yet, but this is a fun start. I'm excited.