What got me started woodworking

If you’ll read on my bio on my main page, you’ll understand why I got into woodworking. I Had horrible kitchen cabinets when we bought our house 8 years ago. I wish I had taken before pictures to show. Imagine white cabinets. I tried to fix the problems by building new doors and adding lip molding, but I was not happy. So for about 2 to 3 years I just built my tool collection and got alot better at using them. Then one day, probably 4 months after hurricane Katrina. We had fixed all the damage to the exterior of our house, and we had some money left over. So after much convincing I talked my wife into letting me gut our kitchen, almost completly. I only left a couple of cabinets, the deal was I got to build the cabinets and get the tools I needed and she got all new appliances. She didn’t want wood cabinet, she wanted a faux finish on them (her best friend is an interior designer). So this is what I did and i took these pictures before I installed the pulls, they are bronze designer handles.
The cabinet doors are all raised panel, cove panel with a beaded inside profile on the rail and stile and european thumbnail on the outside edge. The same outside edge was used on the drawers. The finish on the doors and cabinets—, I painted them gloss white. After they dried, I used a dark walnut stain and rubbed them all down and let that dry a couple of days. On top of that I brushed on 2 coats of polyeurathane. The first coat rewets and lifts the stain and streaks it. The second coat just add protection. It gives it an antique finish. All the doors were made out of MDF to save money. It cost me less than $100 in material to build the doors. Using the european hinges cost more than making the doors (those things are $5 a pair) I have 26 doors. The hardware was bought off ebay for $1.40 apiece. At Lowe’s they were $9. Can you tell I’m try to be frugal (I have more money for tools this way). I also did all the tile work, my first time to do this too. Grand total, I spent less than $1000 on all the materials counting the hardware and pulls, tile and flooring. But this is the project that I’m probably most proud of and love for people to come to our house and see it.
I also did all the tile work. I found a wet saw at at local salvage center that came out of a Lowe’s in Biloxi, it must have been north of I-10 because there was only a little water damage on the box. It retailed for over $300 and I got it for $125. This gave my wife the idea to not only tile our kitchen but also both bathrooms. My tool addiction is forcing me to work

-- Joey, Magee, Ms http://woodnwaresms.com