When
renting an apartment the kitchen is often part of the existing interior and
there isn’t much you can do about it. However, that doesn’t mean you have to
stick with whatever you get! On the picture you can see that the kitchen
originally was super colorful – I have no idea who would want (and actually
buy) this style of kitchen cabinets. The colors didn’t match to the wallpaper
and they also didn’t really go well with each other, at least in my opinion.
So after
seeing the kitchen for the first time, I just knew I had to do something about
it. During the apartment tour the landlord had already said that the cabinets can
be upgraded as long as they don’t get destroyed. After checking out the fronts
it was clear that they couldn’t be painted as they were laminated. I remembered
hearing something about adhesive furniture foil and that’s when the whole kitchen
upgrade began to form in my head :)
Besides the
colorful kitchen cabinets the counter top are made of real wood and as the
previous tenant didn’t really take care of them the wood swelled up especially
around the sink. So this was something that needed to be taken care of as well.
I decided to do this first – I knew I could stand all the colors at least for
some time but as I really enjoy cooking and baking I really wanted to get those
counter tops fixed asap.
I went to a
local hardware store and asked for advice. I had never had a wooden counter top
and wasn’t sure how to maintain it or how to fix the damage. I ended up getting
several sanding papers with different grain sizes and some natural &
organic oil for woods.
I started
off sanding done the kitchen counter using the largest grain size. Once I was
done, I repeated the process with the next smaller sanding paper and so on. In
between I whipped down the sand dust. After I was done you could already feel a
big difference as the surface was just a lot smoother. The next step was to oil
the wood. As I knew it would get in touch with food I it was really important
to me to get an all organic oil. I used a brush to spread the oil and whipped
of the access amount with an old cloth. I repeated the process after 24h. Unfortunately
you can’t really see the difference but mainly feel it! I also pay attention
that no water sits on the counter top and will repeat the oiling every couple
months.
I’ll share
the ‘how to’ install the adhesive furniture foil next :)