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Drew Michael Scott of Lone Fox Home is no stranger to a DIY, but one of his most recent kitchen transformations was a particularly personal one: It was for his friend Benji Le, who lost his home in the Altadena fires earlier this year and relocated to a plain new-build apartment, a distant cry from the warm midcentury home where he once lived.
“While [Le] has incredible style and a great eye for design, DIY projects aren’t exactly his thing—so taking on the kitchen cabinets alone felt daunting,” says Scott, who took on the makeover as part of a collaboration with Mazda. “Our goal was to infuse his new home with the charm and warmth of his old one.”
The key to making the gray-ish white laminate cabinets feel more cozy? Fifteen rolls of $20 faux wood contact paper that Scott found on Amazon. According to his TikTok, he tested five kinds to find the just-right quality and grain pattern that would hide imperfections and prevent bubbles. Speaking of: “Higher-quality vinyls can be peeled up and repositioned without losing their stickiness, which is essential for preventing bubbles,” he says.
In a day, he and Le removed the doors and covered all the cabinet parts in the contact paper, using a utility knife to make clean edges and smoothing with their hands as they went. The final touch? Cutting and staining real wood handles in Minwax’s Colonial Maple and screwing them to the cabinet doors. (Scott says that some hardware stores will cut the pieces for you, or you can use a hand saw.)
The end result? A space that feels more like home, rather than temporary digs. And when it’s time for Le to move on, the whole update can be undone in an afternoon.