About 12 years ago, we decided to update our kitchen from the 1980’s colonial style cabinetry into the new century with a new Tuscan style of cabinetry. It looked great for years but, after we got hit with the tornado last year, Anita wanted to use the opportunity to update the kitchen again into a modern farmhouse style of kitchen. This is the only photo I have of the cabintery I made when we were reinstalling them after the tornado.

Luckily, the only thing that really needed to be done was simply paint the cabinets, get new hardware and update the backsplash. Anita went with a two toned cabinetry with white on the top and dark gray on the bottom.

We took down the Tuscan style tile and installed ship lap as the backsplash. It’s been up for the past eight months and has held up better than I would have expected. There has been no staining on the wood whatsoever even though the kitchen gets used on a daily basis.

The biggest issue we had with the update was the that I had to make a new drawer front for underneath the sink. Before that, we had a wooden fluer de lis applique nailed on the kitchen base.

Making the drawer front was going to be a challenge since I no longer owned a router table. I had to jimmy one up real quick so I grabbed a piece of plywood and laid where I wanted the router to sit.

Then I drilled a few holes so that I could install the router with an opening large enough to accept my panel raising bit.

I then grabbed a piece of scrap wood and routed out the underside to act as a fence.

Adding two clamps to hold down the fence, BOOM!, an instant router table. Using a router table like this can be a bit dangerous as I had no safety shields above the bit, but it just kept me on my toes.

After a little trial and error with scrap wood, I was able to route the edge of the panel with ease.

I needed a round over for the edge of the drawer front so I stuck a 3/8″ round over bit in the router and grabbed another piece of scrap wood for the fence.

My sample board looked great, so I was confident I could get this bit to work well.

After taking a few passes and cleaning up the edge with a rabbet plane, the drawer front was done.

My wife painted the piece dark gray to match the other cabinets and I nailed it onto the kitchen base with 18 gauge brads. Nearly a year after we got hit with the tornado, our updated kitchen is complete.