The Secrets of Wallpaper Removal

Let's talk about one of the most universally hated things home renovators face. Sure there is the lead paint, stinky carpet, a little asbestos, painted trim (who paints heart pine trim?), but the bane of my personal existence is wall paper.

Our dining room when we first moved in!

How to Poly Cabinet Doors - The Right Way

Finishing cabinet doors is pretty straight forward but there is a lot of bad advice out there. In our kitchen we liked the look of natural wood so we decided to coat our doors with polyurethane to protect them from spills and scrapes.

Hinges for Barker Doors on IKEA Sektion

In case you missed it, check out our previous post on combining IKEA Sektion cabinet boxes and Baker doors HERE. This post is meant to explain why the hinges recommended in our last post work so you can order your hinges and doors with confidence.

Recall from the last post that we used Blum's Clip Top Blumotion hinge and hinge plate

• Blum Hinge - 73B3550
• Hinge Plate -  174H7100E

     (build.com is super cheap for the hinges w/ free shipping and we get a small commission)

to connect our custom Barker cabinet doors to the IKEA Sektion cabinet boxes. Since IKEA cabinets are frameless (aka European style) with full overlay doors, we started searching for the correct hinge by focusing on Blum hinges specifically for frameless cabinets.

Traditional Cabinets have a Face Frame - Euro Cabinets are Frameless

Buy a home for under $1000?

Thanks antiquehome.com!

Check out the original add for our home from 1916. Maybe it's just me nerding out, but I though it was awesome step back and look at the same add the original owner found before building our home all those years ago. If you want to learn a more about your own home, check out the style gallery at OldHouseWeb.com. Use your home's architectural style and build date to sleuth through the old house plans at AntiqueHome.com.

Ikea Sektion Cabinets with Barker Doors

When we decided on using Ikea cabinet boxes with Barker Doors there were a lot of questions:

• Is it even possible to use Barker doors with Ikea cabinets?
• Can we use Ikea's blum hinges?
• What size doors should we order?

Choosing Cabinets: the Perfect Kitchen for 50% Off!

If you checked out Jenn's the last post, you know we were looking for a shaker cabinets in white with butcher block counters or natural wood shaker cabinet with white stone counters. Shaker doors meant pretty much every brand of cabinet was open to us. I decided to compare Shenadoah cabinets from Lowes, Barker cabinets, and Ikea cabinets.

Kitchen Dreaming

When we remodeled our first kitchen in the condo, the decisions we had to make were fairly easy. Once we had the layout, the rest of the design decisions were governed by one thing - the budget. A small, two bedroom apartment surrounded by rentals didn't warrant high end finishes. It was a simple money in, money out equation. We didn't want to put more into the kitchen than we were going to get out. So it was pretty easy to rule out things like expensive hardware and natural stone counter tops.