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The kitchen sets the tone for your entire home. If you have tired old builder-grade cabinets, the kitchen is going to look cheap and uninspiring—but fixing the issue isn’t easy. If you own your home, you can always tear out the kitchen and replace it, assuming you have bags of cash just lying around the place—if not, you can always paint the cabinetry. If you’re renting your home, however, you have fewer options; your landlord likely won’t renovate for you, and you’ll want to avoid permanent changes like paint unless you get specific approval.
There’s a surprising solution to this problem, however: Vinyl wrap. Yes, the same stuff that gets put on cars to give them a whole new glossy look can be applied to your kitchen cabinets. The results can be very dramatic, the vinyl wears surprisingly well, it’s extremely cheap (especially if you DIY it), and best of all it’s relatively easy to remove and leaves no residue, so your security deposit is safe. Here’s everything you need to know about vinyl wrapping your kitchen.
Vinyl FTW
For this project, you can use vehicle vinyl wrap or vinyl wrap marketed specifically for furniture and cabinets, like this one, which costs around $50 for a 3-meter roll (a little under 10 feet), or these wraps from 3M that cost about $30 for a 5-foot roll.
One of the great things about vinyl wrapping your kitchen is the selection of colors and finishes. Vinyl wraps come in a very wide range of both: you can get faux wood, high-gloss, patterned, textured, and even metallic and glitter finishes. This gives you a lot of design flexibility. And vinyl wrap, if properly applied, can be surprisingly durable; after all, it’s used on vehicles that are subjected to outdoor conditions. With proper care it will hold up for years; the 3M wraps mentioned above are rated for at least 7 years of use.
DIY or pro?
The process of DIY wrapping your kitchen cabinets is pretty straightforward, and doesn’t require a lot of money or many tools. It does, however, require patience and a bit of skill—you’ll need to be very careful how you measure, cut, and apply the wrap.
You don’t need many tools to get this done:
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Enough wrap to cover your cabinets
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Squeegee to smooth out the wrap
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Pin to discretely pop air bubbles
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Utility blade or razor blade to cut the vinyl
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Heat gun or hair dryer
On TikTok, Paige Sechrist wrapped her kitchen and showed the process she followed, and you can see the process in a bit more detail here. The results depend a lot on how careful you are measuring everything out and how diligent you are ensuring that air bubbles are dealt with. According to Sechrist, the whole cost of DIY wrapping her kitchen was about $100, and it took her less than two days to do the job. She updated the project a year later, showing that the vinyl had worn well, and removed very easily.
If you’re someone like me who wraps gifts like a wild animal and hasn’t cut a straight line once in their entire life, this might seem like a disaster waiting to happen. The good news is that there are professional companies who will perform this service for you. The cost will vary with the size and complexity of your kitchen, but will generally be a few thousand bucks (for example, this company usually charges $5,000 for wrapping a “standard” kitchen). While that’s a lot more than the DIY cost, it’s also a lot less than a full renovation.
Cons of wrapping
Vinyl wrapping your kitchen cabinets can be a cheap, low-risk way to transform a kitchen you don’t own or can’t afford to renovate. But there are some potential downsides to consider:
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Only unpainted. If your cabinets are painted or veneered (meaning they have a thin layer of laminate or wood over a cheaper material), the paint or veneer might come off when you try to remove the vinyl wrap. If you’re not sure what you’re dealing with, test on a small, inconspicuous area first.
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Affected by heat. Part of the installation process for vinyl wrap is to use a heat gun or hair dryer to adhere the wrap to the cabinets, because vinyl wrap reacts to heat. That’s not always ideal in kitchens. Wrapped cabinets near ovens or dishwashers might not wear as well due to heat exposure over time.
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Complexity is an issue. Vinyl wrapping works best on flat cabinet doors. The more paneling and design on your cabinets, the harder it’s going to be to apply a wrap smoothly. Some pro installers won’t even go near cabinets with raised panels or beading for this reason.
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Peeling. If your installation skills aren’t great, if the wrap is consistently exposed to heat, or if it rubs in places as you open doors and pull drawers, you may experience peeling. This will be difficult to repair without re-doing the entire door or drawer.
Still, if you have an ugly kitchen that is killing your soul but you lack the funds or ownership for a permanent change, vinyl wrapping your kitchen might be the perfect solution. For a relatively small amount of money and/or some sweat equity, you can have a new-seeming kitchen in just a day that can be 100% reverted to its original state when it’s time to move.
from LifeHacker https://ift.tt/piC0hv8
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