Kitchen Makeover: Cabinet Toekicks

The toekicks of the kitchen cabinets had originally been covered with blue cove base. (Cove base is the vinyl "baseboard" typically found in office buildings and pubic restrooms.) Removing it shredded the toekicks and left tons of adhesive.

To hide the damage, I made new facades for the toekicks. I cut pieces of MDF to size and covered them with beadboard wallpaper painted black like the cabinets. I attached the facades with a little construction adhesive.

I wanted to dress the cabinets up further by adding feet. While poking around the architectural salvage yard one day, I came across these nine balusters. I saw the nice carved shape and thought, "I can make feet from these!"

Very dirty balusters from an outdoor staircase. Gonna need the Krud Kutter cleaner!

Sure enough, by cutting them into five pieces...

I chopity chop chopped on the chop saw.

I created feet! One section (number 4 above) gave me nine feet for the cabinets. I also got four feet for another project from section 2.

Lots of feet! The nine on the right are for the cabinets.

After thoroughly cleaning the feet, I painted them black. Then I attached them to the cabinets with a drop of construction adhesive.

Total cost of this project was $4.50. I paid 50 cents each for the balusters. The MDF, wallpaper and paint were all leftovers from previous projects.