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My latest project is an oak, galley style kitchen, and I’m digging deeper into ideas to make these older kitchens look more modern.In my example, I brought down one of the upper cabinets.I actually wanted to take down both cabinets on the sink wall, but we didn’t want to lose too much cabinet space. It’s a good trick to use on an island or a peninsula, even if you don’t paint the cabinets on the front.Find a cool, light neutral you like, even a cool white, and your cabinets will feel much more modern. In my kitchen, the pops of green will paired well against the warm cabinets.In terms of the cabinets themselves, they really rang orange…. To tone them down and bring them more into the realm of brown, I waxed them with Briwax in Tudor Brown (I’ll be doing another post on this soon). You never saw black cup pulls, like these, on 80s or 90s cabinets, so just adding them brings the cabinets forward a couple of decades.