Nr Totnes, a dark kitchen gets a new lease of life
This kitchen is a “foil” kitchen. The doors and panels are actually made from MDF, which then has a plastic foil printed with a Cherry wood grain pattern stuck to the surface.
First of all, I am really impressed with the quality of the foil. It even has a textured surface to mimic the grain pores of the real wood and at first glance is difficult to tell from the real thing.
Overall, the kitchen is in really good condition and is well made. The homeowners wanted to lighten up the kitchen, and were even considering getting this lot ripped out and replaced with a new one. The thought of the mess – electricians, plumbers, kitchen fitters, disruption, headaches….(ugh!) led them to search for an alternative. By emailing me photographs and some basic measurements, I could make an assesment of the likely cost of carrying out the work, and a date was set.
Luckily for me and the customer, though this particular kitchen is in the style of doors set in a frame, the frames around each door were removeable, meaning I could take almost the whole kitchen away to the workshop leaving a useable kitchen awaiting their return.
A foil kitchen is not the best surface for painting, it is after all a plastic, and most household “trim” paints are designed to be painted onto primed wood. So I took a lot of care to thoroughly clean and sand the surface first to give the primer something to hold onto, then two coats of a Shellac-based primer provided a good base for the top coats. The customers had previously had an island unit installed which was factory finished in an off-white colour. Could I paint the rest of the kitchen in something similar? A shelf was sent to Holman Specialist Paints, who matched the colour exactly in Tikkurila Helmi Semi Matt.
A minimum of fuss, but quite a makeover!
Published by: Colin Taylor on: February 23rd 2016
