Upgrades For Your Cabinets

When it comes to upgrading your kitchen (or bar area), little things can go a long way! When it came to Heather's bar area, we definitely knew we were going to address the grape vine motif on the glass doors, but I also wanted to do a few more things to add to the form and function of the space.

Here's how the cabinets looked before. . .





You can see that the glass was clear (with a grape vine etching) and that the shelves were wooden.

Because we wanted to get rid of the etching and we felt like the clear glass would mean things always had to be kept tidy, Heather and I decided it would be a better idea to have the glass frosted.  This is a process that can easily be DIYed (get Lowes to cut you a piece of glass to size and use frosted window film to cover it) but since we were in a time crunch and a local glass shop gave us a great price, we handed the whole project off to them!  I generally do this type of thing myself, but it was really nice to go drop off the cabinet doors and know that things would be done perfectly and for a fair price.



Another upgrade we made was adding lighting to the cabinets.  Because these cabinets will often be used to house liquor, I thought it would be really beautiful to have light cascade through the colored glass bottles and create a colorful glow from behind the frosted glass cabinets.  Wiring lights directly would have been more time consuming and expensive, so we went with a battery operated option.  We used these lights from Home Depot.



Installation was super easy and the lights come on with the touch of a button.  We wanted to incorporate a lot of blue into the space because this family cheers for The University of Tulsa (Heather's husband is the athletic director).  To add more of that TU blue, I decided to modify the yellowish light.  I did this by cutting a tiny piece from a gel (gels are used for lighting in production) and placing it over the opening on the under cabinet light. Easy peasy.





You can see the difference the lights make in the next few pictures.

No lights. . .


Light on one side. . .


Lights on both sides. . .


Lastly, because I wanted the lovely light to extend down the entire cabinet, I replaced the bulky wood shelves with sleek glass ones.  The glass allows the light to flood the entire cabinet allowing a beautiful look from the inside and outside.



So there you have it- some simple and affordable, but impactful changes you can make in your own kitchen!  Happy upgrading y'all!