After nine years in her Los Angeles home, Sophie Carpenter had grown weary of her white builder-grade kitchen. “It had gotten to the point where it no longer looked clean, even after it was clean,” she says. She was ready to renovate. The question was, how much should she actually change? It was difficult to justify spending $100,000 on a brand-new space—having recently welcomed her second child, Carpenter doesn’t see her family living in their two-bedroom house forever. Her best bet was to make the home enjoyable enough to tide them over for a few more years with the help of some low-lift (and low-cost) updates.
Carpenter’s good friend, interior designer Heather Phillips of Sunday Supper Club, gave her a few pro tips: Lay inexpensive vinyl tile directly on top of the existing floors ($3,600 for materials and labor) and refresh the backsplash with a matte mosaic tile. When it came to the cabinets, Carpenter called up Home Depot, assuming the existing cupboards must have come from there. Maybe I can just get all new cabinet fronts, she thought. But the in-house designer she met with couldn’t ID them. Ultimately, though, she told Carpenter it didn’t matter: The company could reface any cabinets. The happy discovery meant that not only could Carpenter rethink the style of her fronts, she could do it for around $21,000 and get financing through a Home Depot credit card. Ahead, she reveals what it was like to work with the mass retailer on her kitchen glow-up.
You Can Go Modern With Your Fronts
When Carpenter sent Phillips some images of other kitchens she loved, her friend noticed they all had one thing in common: frameless doors. But after chatting with her Home Depot designer, Carpenter found out that she couldn’t go that minimal based on her kitchen’s cabinet boxes and where the hinges were located. As a compromise, she went with the most discreet option possible: a superthin border reminiscent of Semihandmade’s popular quarterline cabinets.
You’ll Have to Be Flexible on Color
In an ideal world, Carpenter would have selected the exact swatch of her cabinets, but she was limited to the range of finishes and hues available through Home Depot’s refacing service. Luckily, she found a sage green that spoke to her, and there’s no fear of ever seeing brushstrokes: They actually apply the new hue in the form of an adhesive laminate sheet.
For the fridge zone, Phillips advised switching it up with a natural, wood-look finish. The door design is actually slightly different, but it’s close enough that Carpenter didn’t mind mixing the two.
You Might Be Able to Tweak Your Existing Layout
Even though Carpenter wasn’t drastically altering the layout of her space, she found a small work-around to double the storage next to her refrigerator. They demoed the lower cabinet to the right of the appliance and built two stacked pantry cupboards in its place, never touching the actual footprint. “They did all the measurements, which is so cool, because I wouldn’t have trusted myself!” she says with a laugh.
You Can’t Erase Every Last Flaw
In addition to swapping out the doors, Home Depot also refreshed the hinges and the drawer boxes with soft-close hardware. The company even installed the wood pulls Carpenter sourced from Etsy for her. But that doesn’t mean everything is like new. If your cupboards are a little crooked to begin with, this surface-level reno won’t suddenly fix that. “They can’t perfect certain things that were already not straight to begin with,” says Carpenter.
It Will Only Take a Week
While the 12-week lead time is fairly standard for stock cabinets, the install itself took a mere five days. With a baby on the way at the time of the project, Carpenter was especially thankful for that. Her final verdict: “If you’re happy with your layout and the cabinetry is decent, it’s worth doing,” she says. “It’s such a good option for anyone with time and money constraints.”
