Cedar Rapids Oak Kitchen Renovation

Alan's Cedar Rapids, Iowa home was built in 1988. The original kitchen has oak cabinetry, oak wood floors and oak trim. The house has similar oak finish on doors and woodwork throughout. The kitchen had a built-in, double wall oven since it was built. The oven was no longer working and he replaced it 5 or 6 years ago with a new, single oven with stove top across the kitchen. Alan and his wife recently decided they would finally have the broken, double-oven removed and would then replace that space with much needed, usable, additional kitchen storage such as a food pantry instead.

Alan’s DIY Experience

At age 72, Alan has done many DIY projects over the years, but definitely has minimal woodworking experience or skills. He had never undertaken a project like this, nor replaced cabinets or installed cabinet doors. Alan’s brother in law helped him by watching several how-to and DIY videos. They then agreed together to remove the old, double built-in oven. They first shut off the electrical power and disconnected the electrical wiring to the old oven. Then they were able to lift it out onto a dolly, load it in the back of his smallish SUV, after which he drove it to their local appliance recycling collection area.

The Measuring Process

Only after this oven was removed could he and his wife see what the empty space looked like where the double oven had been able to accurately take measurements. Only then could he and his wife decide what to do to best utilize this space functionally and what they wanted it to look like. They decided to build shelves, add cabinet doors and create a storage pantry to fit nicely with their existing oak cabinetry.

Alan’s Biggest Challenge

Alan described the biggest challenges were finding a local, skilled handyman, carpenter or company who had interest and time to take on a small project like his. Similarly, he checked with several local kitchen cabinet door makers and suppliers. They would only need two new, high quality, oak cabinet doors to fit their custom sized, pantry opening. This was considerably more money than they wanted to spend. Those factors led them to search online and do this project on their own. His search found plenty of online, DIY videos, as well as led him to cabinet door makers and suppliers.

Choosing CabinetDoorMart

Alan’s online search led him to CabinetDoorMart.com. He was impressed by our website content, ease of use, large product selections, competitive pricing, free shipping, and reasonable shipping time. He said what was especially important was our easy to follow, helpful instructions for how to correctly measure the opening for the new cabinet doors.

He locally purchased the wood for the adjustable shelving, then made and installed those. He used our guidelines for accurate measuring and ordered the two heritage style cabinet doors in oak from us.

“Throughout my interactions with Cabinetdoormart.com the service was positive, friendly and professional. Your communications were always timely and dependable. My order arrived exactly within your estimated timeframe. The packaging of these unfinished oak doors was excellent. They arrived undamaged, looked great and were very high quality oak. These were built perfectly to the dimensions I provided per your guidelines.”

The Final Project

He had not done any wood staining for many years. Using a high quality wood stain, one coat went on well and sufficiently, but he applied a second coat to get the finish darker to match their existing, thirty-plus year old cabinets and cabinet doors.

Small or large cabinetry projects, CabinetDoorMart has you covered from order to delivery. If you are ready to start ordering today please contact us!