That looks amazing! Awesome job - congratulations! I see the pictures, and know you added some extra colorant to the stain, but would you say the Java colored stain is similar to the popular "Espresso" colored cabinets you can buy? I'm want to use the gel stain to redo some bathroom cabinets, and that's the color I'd like to go for.

Yes, the stain without colorant added is what I would equate to an espresso. I used it like that in the bathroom of this same house. It was fantastic!

Such a nice job & lovely rooms!

Thanks! If we were staying in the house we would have likely replaced the kitchen cabinets for our own use, but it made no sense to do that in this particular house to sell it as, sadly, it's actually one of the nicest ones in the neighborhood. New cabinets would have priced it out of the market in this area and so this was a good solution.

I was worried about dark cabinets and a darker floor in such a small space so I used the light counters to help lighten things up and improved the lighting in the room with new fixtures. The dark appliances were still in very good shape so it made no sense to replace them.......otherwise I would have preferred stainless, but it's alright.....the buyers loved it. Surprisingly, the adjustments I made actually opened it up and lightened the feel of the room.

I think this kitchen is so on trend right now. I think frozen pond is going to be the new grey. Just saw the designer Alexa Hampton's additon and remodel of her NYC apartment in the April issue of Architectural Digest and this color is in her family room and she had custom wallpaper done with this color in it for her foyer and her kitchen was painted all black. She used brown as her accent with the blue green walls for her family room. And her budget was way beyond $1500! haha

What I love about the kitchen is that you have white trim, a little bit for pop, grey floors, a combo of black and white mixed together, for a bigger pop, and black appliances and cabinets with a hush of color in them and it is a perfect balance for the space for the biggest pop. Perfect ratios of colors inthe room! I love the black appliances; ss is on trend but the black works the very best in this room.....you are a genius. The nicest thing about a strict budget is that you are constantly redefining what you can 'have' in the room....challenging. Love it and of course your know it is perfect because it met your goal of selling the house and it met the appraisal goal too. Well done I'd say.

Beautiful. What type of colorant did you add to the gel stain?

The colorant that was recommended to me for the gel stain was Mixol. I used both blue (to cool down the brown) and black.

Blue gel stain? That's great. It sounds like the Mixol brand comes in more color options than General Finishes. How was the Mixol to work with (having only heard about General Finishs), and how did you know to mix the blue, did someone guide you on color mixing? Im going to need a little help figuring out what colors to mix to get the right finish.

I guess I wasn't very clear. The gel stain was the General Finishes Java. The Mixol is only a colorant that was added to change the dark brown of the Java to a cool black. Just adding black to the stain would have only created a darker brown and so I added blue as well.

I'm an artist (oils, watercolors, mixed media and sculpture). I thought to add the stain to a bit of white paint so I could better see what hue the brown tended toward (it's hard to see in very dark colors) before deciding what to mix into the stain. It looked a bit brownish orange. The compliment to Orange is blue and blue is generally a cool color so......I added blue a little bit at a time.

Oh I see. Very smart. I didn't know there were other coloring additive options. I will have to look into that. Thank you!

A big improvement!

Nicely done.

Great improvement. Nice job.

Great job!

Nice Job!

What an improvement!