Faux Cabinet Feet

One of the little upgrades we did during our cabinet makeover was add faux feet.  We added the beautiful new header and crown molding as well as some extra trim, and the bottoms were needing something to dress them up.  My mother-in-law has done this to her cabinets before, usually adding bun feet, but after searching high and low for feet that would fit under my cabinets without having to make some serious modifications I came up empty-handed.  Then (too quickly) came the day we were scrambling to get everything ready for the painter (who was coming early the next morning), so I was out of time and options.  Time to get creative!

We strolled up and down the aisles at our local Home Depot, and I kept coming back to these little base molding pieces.  They were $1.38 apiece, nice price since some feet were upwards of $10-12 each, and I wanted to put a lot on.  That and the more expensive ones didn’t fit anyway.  I knew there was a way we could make these $1.38 babies work!  After some trial-and-error, here’s what I came up with

Two molding pieces together = one flat foot!

This ended up being a great solution, because it fit snugly under the cabinets (after being cut to the right height) and the depth was perfect.  We didn’t have to mess with the existing quarter-round moldings that were at the base of the cabinets and the floor. Considering how little time we had to work with, that was pretty much a disaster averted!!

I won’t lie, cutting these to the proper height wasn’t easy or quick, since our floors and/or cabinet bases are all different heights.  Sure, they look the same, but looks can be deceiving.  My sweet husband made many trips back and forth adjusting the height by only taking off “a hair” at a time until each one fit it’s specific place in the kitchen.

Here’s what installation looked like (pre-paint, obviously):

Next came figuring out the corners.  I put three pieces together to wrap the corners:

You can see the small hole on the right side where the nail was shot to hold it together

Since we had plenty of pieces, we decided to go all-out with the feet, putting them pretty much everywhere.  I’m happy we did, they give the cabinets a more custom furniture feel.  After they were installed I filled all the holes and cracks in preparation for the coats of paint they were about to get.  A little tedious, yes…but now that they are done they look nice and it was worth it!

Here are some post-paint pictures: (much prettier)

So there you have it!  Faux feet from cheap molding pieces.  I actually had fun problem-solving a bit with this one.  What creative solutions have you found for your DIY projects?  Post in comments – I’d love to hear!