Kitchen Renovation with Painted Cabinets and Beadboard

This project has been on my mind for, oh I don’t know, 8 years or so. I honestly don’t know how long I’ve been thinking about it, but it feels like a while!

We reconfigured our island cabinets a long time ago, and we changed the laminate counter (hunter green to be exact) to the quartz we have today. We later added a tile backsplash. It was a darker color scheme, and I liked it at the time. Or maybe I just thought it went with the house? I’m not really sure.

We got a quote a couple years ago to paint the cabinets. I went back and forth on the backsplash, but I found so many inspiration photos with a beadboard backsplash and decided that was the right direction. A couple reasons: it’s affordable, and it could be installed over the existing tile.

When we started demo, we started to remove the tile. It was taking off a lot of the existing drywall and making a complete mess. Time to regroup.

By removing only the small “basket weave” mosaic band, we could go back in with a thin strip of wood to even out the wall. It also gave us a place to nail the beadboard while the adhesive cured.

We used a heavy duty construction adhesive that said it was suitable for ceramic. Before applying the adhesive, I removed any grease or dirt, and wiped the tile with acetone.

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We used a pin nailer to secure everything in place, and wedged strips of wood between the cabinet and the quartz backsplash to make sure it was pressed tightly to the tile overnight until the adhesive cured.

To cover the two ends of the beadboard, we used a small piece of finish trim. It covers the existing tile edge and the beadboard edge. *Note, we removed the last row of tile on the ends and filled with a piece of wood. This provided an area to nail the beadboard on each end of the backsplash.

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The final step was filing the small nail holes and caulking. I used a paintable caulk and went over each seam, around the top and bottom of the backsplash, around the window trim, and on each end where we had the trim.

Our part was done! Time for someone else to do the work!

The paint crew removed all of the doors/drawer fronts and numbered them. They primed and painted the cabinet frames in place, and they took the doors and drawers off site to spray. They color matched to Sherwin Williams Ivory Lace.

For the hardware, I considered a darker oil rubbed bronze and looked for coordinating knobs/pulls, but I found these antique brass knobs (sourced here) and love the brass with that darker detail. They compliment the oil rubbed bronze faucet and light fixtures, but look nice against the off white cabinets and countertops.

You might also notice that the curvy ceiling light is gone. We took that down and added 4” recessed LED lights for a cleaner look.

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I cannot get over the difference! Painting the cabinets and updating the backsplash completely transformed our kitchen!

Paint Color: Sherwin Williams Ivory Lace shown below on both the walls and the kitchen cabinets.