September 17, 2012

DIY ~ Adding Drawer Liner To The Back Of Open Cabinets

Before we moved the furniture into the bungalow we decided to try and get a head start on painting the kitchen cabinets. We got as far as removing all of the cabinet doors and hardware, giving then a couple of coats of Behr's Pure Ultra White paint, and getting one coat on the uppers. Painting cabinets definitely takes longer than we anticipated! So we have now decided to continue chipping away at them when we have a free minute here and there between other projects.

Over the weekend we finished painting the open cabinet (the one on the right in photo below). True to the nature of everything else the previous owners had "DIYed" around the house, this section looks like it had started life out as a two sided open cabinet over a peninsula in another kitchen. The top and bottom edges have plastic runners where glass panel doors would have slid back and forth on either side. We know they were glass panels because we found two of them in the basement and the other two out in the yard.


I had initially intended to paint the back of this cabinet a dark grey (the kitchen walls are soon to be light grey) but whilst I was at Walmart picking up some drawer liner for under the kitchen sink, I found this absolutely perfectly patterned drawer liner. On the spot I decided it would be a much better way to liven up our open cabinet than to paint the back. I snatched up 2 rolls and beelined to the checkout (grabbing some double sided tape on the way).


As I'm not that great with commitment I didn't want to glue the liner to the wall behind the cabinet. Instead, I chose to use the double sided tape as that way if we get sick of the pattern it can easily be taken down and replaced with something else.

Installing the liner was super simple and took under 15 minutes. We roughly measured the width of the cabinet and cut the liner to size. I knelt on the counter and positioned the liner in place whilst D cut 1 inch strips of double sided tape and passed them up to me. I started on the left side and placed a strip of tape about every 5 inches. When I got to the other side I just creased the liner into the corner of the cabinet and trimmed off the excess with an Xacto knife.

I love it so much I'm thinking of doing the same to the rest of the upper cabinet with doors to give us a pleasent surprise when we open them up.

Definitely a great, easy and inexpensive way to add some colour and interest to open cabinets without committing to anything long term or spending a ton on a roll of wallpaper.



Supplies:
2 rolls of drawer liner from Walmart - $6.97 each
1 roll of double sided tape - $2.97 each
Xacto knife
Time:
Under 15 minutes



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