Ugly Cabinets That I Am Afraid to Change

OK, so I take liberties with my lease when it comes to improvements. I'm painting the bathroom, for example. However, no one in their right mind would say I should "preserve" the hideous, soiled, drooping wallpaper from 1982. And I chose a clean neutral for the walls, so who could complain. But now I'm turning my attention to the elephant in the room. Those wooden monstrosities some might call cabinets. I don't know what to do. If I owned the place I would sand them, paint them white, and attach lovely turquoise crystal knobs. I read a blog about putting fabric over the cabinet doors. To be honest, it didn't really look that good. It looked like someone had a weird idea to draw attention to a cabinet with some ugly fabric. So I think the only safe route is contact paper. I found one in turquoise and white. I think I'm going to put it over the middle panel and paint the hardware the same Informal Ivory as the walls. But I'm getting ahead of myself here; I need to finish priming first. Lord my load is heavy.