Transform Your Kitchen with This Stylish Update That Skips Major Renovations

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Often referred to as the heart of the home, the kitchen is not only a place where daily meals are prepared, it’s a nerve center which invites both togetherness and communication. In an effort to keep this space warm and inviting, changes will have to be made over the years. Though replacing your kitchen cabinets can be cost prohibitive and disruptive, there are manageable changes such as introducing a new color with a fresh coat of paint, changing out hardware to boost your kitchen’s style and function, or simply adding crown molding.

Perhaps there’s a space between the tops of your cabinets and the ceiling, large enough for dust bunnies but too small for anything practical, or maybe you want to add a more polished look. Adding crown molding is a relatively easy DIY upgrade that can give a big wow factor to the overall look of your kitchen, especially if you’ve installed crown molding elsewhere in your home.

Excited to add a new dimension to your old kitchen cabinets, you may feel the urge to rush off to Home Depot to select a style, from stepped and stacked to traditional, but first things first. You’ll want to start by measuring the top edge of your cabinets to know how much molding you’ll need. Be sure to add some extra length, as crown molding is cut at angle and it will be longer than the length of your cabinets. Since you want to add height, don’t add the molding directly to the tops of your cabinets. Instead, attach 1×2 inch strips of scrap wood with wood glue and nails to provide a surface for the molding.

For this project, you’ll need a miter saw and a helpful crown molding tool to make cutting and installing safe and easy. If you need a refresher course, there’s plenty of online tutorials that will help. After cutting and nailing the molding to the scraps, keeping the corners tightly secured with glue and tape (until the glue dries), you’ll want to caulk any seams or cracks for a smooth finish. Once dry, all that’s left is adding a coat or two of paint in the same color as your cabinets.

Increasing the height and elegance of your kitchen cabinets is certainly one way to make an impact on your overall kitchen design, but you can also add more depth by adding molding to trim flat cabinet doors. Using basically the same tools as above, you can easily and affordably add just a little detail that can transform the entire look of your kitchen. Start by deciding upon the desired design, keeping in mind room for clearance (when you open the doors) and for hardware on the existing cabinet doors.

You may be excited for the new look, but there’s no reason to go overboard. Since this is for the front of your cabinets, less is more, so keep the molding design small and simple. Using paper templates for the layout will aid in the visualization of the design before you get past the point of no return. Measure (and measure again) before cutting the selected molding and feel free to use quick-drying adhesive glues instead of wood glues to avoid the need for clamps. Then caulking gaps, a little light sanding, and a quick paint job is all it will take to create what will seem like a brand new kitchen.