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

Tape Art

Our window seat at the top of the stairs is still a work in progress. We have been busy with painting the kitchen cabinets, working on the yard, and um, life in general.

That being said, I have been working on making some DIY art to hang on the walls in the window seat area. I have three pieces planned. All are ideas I have seen floating around Pinterest lately. 

First Piece: Absract Art Using Tape

I have seen quite a few DIY canvases using painters tape in different formats but I really got excited about trying it myself when I saw Michelle's tutorial over at Ten June. I loved the grey and white and her line placement (neutral colours always speak to me).

I decided I wanted my piece to be black and white.

         

So I set out and bought a $2 canvas from the dollar store and found some painters tape laying around the house. Originally my plan was to reverse tape my lines because I wanted to have black lines on the raw white canvas. The plan was to come up with a pattern, mask off the lines and spray paint them black.

I started out by taping my line pattern and then masking the areas I wanted to stay white. The top portion went pretty smoothly but once I was at the middle (where the lines are busier) it was starting to get confusing and a lot more effort than I really wanted to put into the project. After an hour of taping and cutting I was also getting frustrated.

So I decided to rip off all of my hard work and come up with a Plan B instead. After a few minutes I had an 'Ah Ha' moment and wondered why I didn't think of Plan B in the first place.

What was Plan B? Hockey Tape!!

I always have a roll at the bottom of my roller derby bag so I ran to go find it. Upon inspection I realized that the black hockey tape was the perfect width and texture of what I had originally envisioned for this DIY abstract piece.

And the kicker is it took me all of 5 minutes to complete. As easy as figuring out your design and sticking it to the canvas.

Voila, DIY abstract art in seconds flat ;)