Hi! My husband and I discovered Sarah through her Not So Big Life book, which we've appreciated so much. It's been surprising and exciting to learn that according to Home By Design our modest house follows quite a few of Sarah's principles! We're now using her books to help us revamp our house and are so grateful for this incredible resource.

So my question: Our small ranch-style home has a cedar clapboard exterior and several skylights on an acre of wooded land. The house does not have expensive materials however it's very natural, warm, open, and has a wonderful feel. However, its main shortcoming, which is too costly to change at this time, is that when it was built in the 1980s yellow oak was used for all floors and cabinets. The overall effect is dated and, well... very yellow-orange.

We'd like to repaint the walls in all major areas (now a pale yellow) in something warm, natural and earthy. Our personal style is not conservative but an eclectic mix of American southwest with Asian touches, such as Buddhas, from our travels. In addition, we'd love for the kitchen, a focal point, to be in a different but equally cosy (and possibly playful) color. The kitchen has MANY oak cabinets AND a terracotta tile floor so it desperately needs a color scheme that will remove the yellow-oranginess of the cabinets and floor. What can you recommend?

Also, do you have any opinion on whether eventually refacing the cabinets is worthwhile rather than tossing them out? Is there a way to make peace with this yellowish oak everywhere without resorting to removing it all?

Thank you so much!

Danielle, Montreal

Two answers:
Repainting walls: Let your accessories define your room, not the wall color. Regardless of the color, it it is not neutral, within a couple of years you will feel that it is dated. Look at the taupes and off-whites.

Refacing:Unless you do it yourself, cabinet refacing is almost always more expensive than replacing your cabinets. We had horribly dated dark oak cabinets, and had the local Big Home Improvement Center that heavily advertises cabinet refacing give us a quote, and were given a price of over $40,000! Egads!

We removed the doors and drawers, painted the cabinets ourselves, and put new updated drawers and doors for less than $5,000.

If you are going to repaint your cabinets, do it right, not the way they do on HGTV, with a brush and latex paint. Take everything out of your kitchen, mask everything, turn your AC off, use lots of plastic sheeting to prevent overspray, and spray on the new finish. It will look as if you bought new painted cabinets.

The mark of a good cabinet re-do is if no one can tell that it has been worked on. If you get remarks from folks that have never seen your kitchen before like "Oh, I see you repainted your cabinets!", then you did a bad job.

We had friends that stained their terra-cotta floor with good results.

Bill, thanks so much for the great advice!

We actually got a relatively reasonable quote for refacing, new doors, countertops, etc from Sears. We have a lot of cabinets (to give you an idea, at least 40 handles) so in our case it is cheaper to reface. What I had wondered about is how it stands up, whether the veneer can come off in a humid area, if it looks brand new, etc.I definitely agree that if you're going to invest time and/or money you want it all to look NEW.

In any case, for the next year or two our plan is to make the best of what we have by repainting the walls, decluttering the countertops, and refreshing the whole thing on a budget. I wasn't sure about which paint colors or tones for the walls would play down the yellow in our oak rather than emphasize it.

Thanks for your help!

I don't completely agree with Bill. First, as you found, refacing isn't always as expensive as redoing the cabinets. Are your cabinet boxes in good condition? Are they reasonably straight and square? If not, you may want to just replace them.
When you mention veneers, are you referring to the face frames only, or the doors too? Veneers, of course, are always somewhat more delicate than solid wood, but cabinet doors take a lot of bumps and slams, so I would go for the kind of refacing that replaces the doors with new ones and just uses veneer on the face frames.
Second, it's realtors' advice to use taupe or white or off-white. Paint is about the easiest thing in a home to change, so go for it. Paint all the walls a color, or use off white on three walls and do one wall a bolder color -- but an earth tone rather than a pure jewel color. As to what will make your yellow floors look less yellow: try things. Theory is all very well, but trying it out really works. When I was picking the shade of white paint to go with my dusty peach carpets, I thought a contrast would work, something with a hint of green (the opposite of peach), but I was wrong: it ended up with a very light white with the merest hint of peach in it. When you narrow down the color choice to a couple, you can usually get some larger paint samples to tack to the wall and see what it does. Be sure to check it in various light: different times of day and in artificial light.
I do agree with Bill that spray paint gives a much smoother, more professional look to painted cabinets, if that is the look you want. Some people do prefer the "homemade" look. However, don't expect any home done finish to be as strong as the factory polyurethane finishes.
Another thing to consider is that if you don't replace the cabinets, you can't change the configuration much. Are you satisfied with the arrangement of your kitchen? Does it help you cook rather than fight with you? How many frustrating things does it have? You need to take it all into consideration (and price too) when you decide. But make the decision yourself, don't let a sales person persuade you, just inform you.
Also, look into refinishing the floor. they can be sanded and refinished, and then stained a different color. Some of the newer finish materials don't yellow with age as much as what you probably have on your floors. Though, oak is a yellowish wood, and you can't get rid of it completely without painting (or maybe bleaching).
Just to let you know, I went through school to get a degree in kitchen and bath design, and worked as a kitchen design assistant for three years at a design/build firm, but then I have not been in the business since, though I maintain my interest in kitchen design.

Hi! Wow Kim, thanks for that great long reply!

Lucky for us, the layout of our kitchen is optimal. The cupboards all appear to be extremely tough and straight so we would want to reface them then replace all the doors. What *sucks* is that our doors use outside hinges (not sure what they're called but they're the old-fashioned kind that are visible) and the way the doors are mounted it's like they butt up against the cabinet (with spacing around all sides) rather than fit to it like a glove. I'd probably need to attach a photo to show what I mean but I suspect it'll make doing a nice, clean replacement difficult if not impossible.

In the meantime, today we're beginning to go through all the cabinets and give away what we don't use as Step 1 of Operation Kitchen! Then we have a long upper cabinet to remove that divides our kitchen visually in 2. Then we'll find a new home for its contents, clean up the pantry, then set about figuring out wall color(s) and all that. So I don't think we'll be getting around to refacing anything anytime soon but I hope by Christmas our kitchen will look a whole lot fresher.

Much thanks for your great advice!

It sounds like what you are describing is face frame cabinets. They have overlay doors that leave the face frame of the cabinet box visible. Those doors would probably be easy to replace, but you have to be concerned with what the face frame looks like too because it's exposed to sight. The other types of cabinets are :full overlay face frame (what you have but with bigger doors so they hide the face frame), frameless (no front on the cabs, the door is attached to the insides of the box by hinges inside the box), and inset doors (the doors fit precisely into the hole that is the front of the (framed) cabinet, leaving a smooth face -- this is the hardest to do therefore the most expensive).
Check around about types of hinges. There are invisible hinges, but you can only use them on some kinds of cabs. Check with someone who is up on the latest info -- they keep inventing new things.