How to update a kitchen set with your own hands

For every ten­ant of a house or apart­ment, there comes a time when it becomes a ques­tion of replac­ing fur­ni­ture in the kitchen. There are some of the most com­mon ways to update a kitchen set with your own hands with the sim­plest tools and basic build­ing skills. And at the same time, cre­at­ing an author’s kitchen inte­ri­or is prac­ti­cal­ly free.

Such restora­tion, with the right approach, will make it pos­si­ble to use cab­i­nets and cab­i­nets for sev­er­al more years, and dif­fer­ent meth­ods will help cre­ate unusu­al pieces of fur­ni­ture.

Basic kitchen set methods

Most often, only facades fail: the hinges on the doors break, the veneer peels off, the col­or fades, the threads on the han­dles and oth­er fit­tings break off. You can also update the fur­ni­ture in a fair­ly decent con­di­tion, if you want to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent style in the room, and there is no mon­ey in the fam­i­ly bud­get to buy oth­er cab­i­nets. If only the appear­ance is worn out, you can update the kitchen set, which will save a large amount.

Features of using self-adhesive film

The cheap­est of all ways to update a kitchen set is stick­ing self-adhe­sive film over the old coat­ing. The choice of col­ors, tex­tures, sizes of the can­vas on the mar­ket of fin­ish­ing mate­ri­als is pre­sent­ed in unlim­it­ed quan­ti­ties.

First you need to select the desired mate­r­i­al design and deter­mine the width of the roll to be pur­chased. This will facil­i­tate the work and min­i­mize waste dur­ing glu­ing.

For con­ve­nience, it is bet­ter to remove the doors from the hinges and place them on a flat hor­i­zon­tal sur­face, after leav­ing marks where and what part was locat­ed. Before glu­ing, you need to care­ful­ly process the sash. If the veneer is peeled off, remove it com­plete­ly. In places where this is not pos­si­ble, care­ful­ly grind with sand­pa­per, mak­ing the sur­face even. It is nec­es­sary to wash the doors from grease and oth­er con­t­a­m­i­nants. Wipe dry at the end.

Details are cut from the roll accord­ing to the size of all ele­ments. For con­ve­nience, use the mark­ings on the back of the film. When mea­sur­ing, you should leave a grip of a few cen­time­ters, which com­pen­sates for the pos­si­bly uneven loca­tion of the cut. After glu­ing, the excess edges can be cut off with a cler­i­cal knife.

Glu­ing occurs in stages. First, about 5 cm of the sticky lay­er is released from the pro­tec­tive paper. The film is applied along the edge of the facade. Care­ful­ly, smooth­ing the air bub­bles from the cen­ter to the edges with a sil­i­cone spat­u­la or a sim­ple nap­kin, the cut is glued. All facade parts are processed in the same way.

It is impor­tant to know: if tuber­cles with air remain under the film, they are pierced with a thin nee­dle and smoothed out.

At the end, return the han­dles to their place. If nec­es­sary, change them to oth­ers. Accord­ing to the marks, all the doors are screwed onto the hinges.

Features of using ceramic tiles

Smooth facades can be dec­o­rat­ed with ceram­ic tile inserts. For these pur­pos­es, sev­er­al ele­ments lined up in a row, 1 large rec­tan­gu­lar tile of a suit­able size or mosa­ic squares are suit­able. It all depends on the imag­i­na­tion of the per­former and the con­for­mi­ty of the decor with the gen­er­al con­cept of style.

The doors are removed from the hinges, laid on a flat sur­face, cleaned of dirt. If nec­es­sary, paint. For glu­ing tiles, you can use any suit­able tool for these pur­pos­es, most often tile glue or liq­uid nails.

To com­plete the dec­o­ra­tive inserts, you can make a frame from the mold­ing. It remains only to let the glue dry and hang the updat­ed doors in place.

Rules for replacing facades

The sim­plest, but cost­ly method of updat­ing the facade of the kitchen is to replace the doors. The point is to buy suit­able doors, which is not dif­fi­cult if the head­set is on the mar­ket.

The way out is how to update the kitchen by replac­ing the facade, if the kit is out of fash­ion and it is impos­si­ble to pur­chase acces­sories for it — cus­tom-made. Any work­shop or fur­ni­ture shop will be hap­py to take on such work. True, the acqui­si­tion will cost an order of mag­ni­tude more expen­sive than fin­ished prod­ucts.

Pro­duc­tion accord­ing to an indi­vid­ual sketch can also be used in a stan­dard sit­u­a­tion, if an unusu­al idea for a kitchen facade aris­es.

The specifics of the use of rattan fabric

You can dec­o­rate kitchen fur­ni­ture with arti­fi­cial rat­tan. In addi­tion to the can­vas itself, you will need wood­en dec­o­ra­tive strips.

Impor­tant to know: before start­ing work, the rat­tan roll is soaked in cold water for 30 min­utes. This will increase the vol­ume of the mate­r­i­al. As a result, after fix­ing and dry­ing, the rat­tan will shrink and stretch on the sur­face, form­ing an even coat­ing.

Dec­o­ra­tive strips of the desired length are cut in advance, the cuts are made at an angle of 45 °, sand­ed with sand­pa­per of the finest spray­ing. The cut pieces are var­nished and allowed to dry. If rough­ness is formed, they are sand­ed and a lay­er of var­nish is applied again.

It’s time to fix the pieces of rat­tan pre-cut from the com­mon roll. To do this, each ele­ment is placed in the cen­ter of the facade and shot with a con­struc­tion sta­pler. Sta­ples must be nailed strict­ly along the edge of the can­vas, so that in the future they will be hid­den by planks.

At the final stage, a frame is formed. Pre­pared dec­o­ra­tive strips are nailed with fur­ni­ture studs with­out hats, while strength­en­ing the edge of the rat­tan and hid­ing the sta­ples.

Decoupage

The most extra­or­di­nary way to update an old kitchen set is decoupage dec­o­ra­tion. The method involves glu­ing paper ele­ments (nap­kins, wall­pa­per) to some areas or to the entire fur­ni­ture. Decoupage is espe­cial­ly in demand when fin­ish­ing rare fur­ni­ture. It allows you to turn a kitchen cab­i­net of the last cen­tu­ry into an ultra-mod­ern piece of fur­ni­ture.

First you need to deter­mine what mate­r­i­al the sur­faces will be past­ed over. Buy them. You will also need PVA glue, brush­es of dif­fer­ent sizes, acrylic clear var­nish.

The treat­ed areas of the facades are cleaned of dirt, the entire sur­face is treat­ed with a primer.

The mate­r­i­al cho­sen for dec­o­ra­tion is cut. If you need to make kitchen dec­o­ra­tive inserts in the form of a giv­en bitmap, cut out its details. If wall­pa­per sheets are used, they are glued to the wall­pa­per paste. Decoupage from nap­kins is first fixed with water from a spray bot­tle, and then a lay­er of PVA is applied over the pat­tern.

The most cru­cial moment is smooth­ing the paper. This is best done with a stiff brush, care­ful­ly work­ing the sur­face from one edge to the oth­er.

After com­plete dry­ing, the pat­tern is cov­ered with sev­er­al lay­ers of trans­par­ent var­nish.

Hardware replacement

Often the bud­get line of fur­ni­ture is equipped with low-qual­i­ty fit­tings. As a result, after a short peri­od of oper­a­tion, the han­dles begin to fall off, the hinges are deformed and the doors sag, the draw­er pull-out mech­a­nisms fail. If the pan­el parts have been pre­served, you can return the kitchen fur­ni­ture to its orig­i­nal appear­ance by installing oth­er spare parts on it.

When pur­chas­ing acces­sories, you should give pref­er­ence to high-qual­i­ty goods, care­ful­ly inspect mov­ing parts so that after some time you do not encounter the same prob­lem.

Restoration of damaged countertops

The work sur­face in the kitchen is the most sus­cep­ti­ble to dam­age. If it is made of nat­ur­al mate­ri­als, wood or stone, you can restore the orig­i­nal appear­ance by grind­ing and pol­ish­ing.

How­ev­er, most often in the kitchen they install a coun­ter­top made of MDF or chip­board, which basi­cal­ly con­sist of saw­dust. When mois­ture gets into unpro­tect­ed places, the struc­ture of the mate­r­i­al swells and los­es its shape.

To restore such a coun­ter­top, you have to work hard. To begin with, the swollen mate­r­i­al is cleaned at the place of defor­ma­tion, leav­ing only the glued struc­ture. The saw­dust is dried and mixed with PVA until a homo­ge­neous con­sis­ten­cy. The recess­es and chips are sealed with this mass, fixed with bars and left for 2 days, until the glue dries com­plete­ly. If a piece of lam­i­nate has bro­ken off, the already pre­pared sur­face can be sealed with a piece of veneer.

The glass coun­ter­top can­not be restored at home. Its pro­cess­ing requires the pres­ence of a spe­cial tool and skills.

If a piece of plas­tic coun­ter­top breaks off, you can glue it with any suit­able glue.