There's been a lack of blogging (alot lately) but more so recently because Chris and I have been engrossed in quite the project here at home! Let me start this by saying our house was built in 1998 and we bought it at the height of the housing boom in 2006, about 9 months after we got married. It was supposed to be our '5-year-starter-home' that has turned into our '8.5-years-later-and-we're-still-here-home,' thanks to the housing bubble busting! Our house was fine when it was just us but it's a little tighter with a kid and all her stuff! We've done lots of updates to our house over the years, but one project we've never tackled or even discussed is the kitchen. It's open, which is great, but it's small with not much counter space, not to mention I hate the counter tops. Back in July I got a wild hare, started looking online, and then I mentioned to Chris a couple of 'easy' ways we could update...including painting the kitchen cabinets, painting the walls, and possibly getting new counter tops. Well, we looked into new counter tops and decided it's out of the budget, but surprisingly enough, he was completely on board with painting the cabinets!! Here's the before.
Once we decided to do the project we did it right away because there wasn't much time left in Chris' summer break. We did read lots of blogs about painting cabinets and Chris watched lots of videos on YouTube before we got started (we started on July 28, which was a Monday).
We started taking things out of the cabinets and drawers on Monday and Tuesday night. We carefully piled things in the guest room, and yep, it ended up looking like the kitchen threw up in the spare bedroom!
Tuesday night after we finished cleaning out, we taped. Chris took the cabinet doors off on Wednesday afternoon and cleaned everything really good with a de-greaser, and he primed the cabinets in the kitchen Wednesday night.
Thursday afternoon he primed the cabinet doors, which were set up in the garage.
Thursday night we started painting, applying the first coat on the cabinets. The color we chose was 'Antique White,' and we used Valspar Signature latex paint. We did not do any sanding, as we felt it wasn't necessary based on what our cabinets were like. So we did save ourselves a step there and it worked out fine.
Each night we couldn't really start working until after Sara Kate went to bed, which was around 8:30. We knew we had the hard stuff left to do on Friday night and Saturday, and Chris' mom was kind enough to take Sara Kate as soon as we got home Friday. She kept her Friday night and all day Saturday, which was amazing. Friday night we put a second coat of paint on the cabinets in the kitchen and headed into the garage to paint the doors.
We painted the back side of the doors Friday night and luckily they were dry enough Saturday morning for us to flip them over. The front of the doors was a tedious process because of the beveling. I used a fancy brush we bought (a Purdy brand brush...I actually used this brush to get
around the moulding on the cabinets too) around all the edges and the
beveling and Chris came behind me and rolled. Once the first coat was on the doors we had to wait a while...we wanted to make sure it was good and dry before doing the second coat. We applied the first coat about 9:00 Saturday morning, went and ran some errands, and applied the second coat around 3:30 that afternoon.
Once we finished the doors we came back inside and touched up anything we felt needed touching up. Sunday afternoon we carefully peeled off the tape and put the appliances back. What a difference already!
I don't know if you can tell in the picture above, but we had a lovely fluorescent light that absolutely HAD to be changed while we were updating!! Chris' dad came over Sunday afternoon and they made a trip to Home Depot while I stayed home with Sara Kate. The fluorescent light left small holes in the ceiling and they had to so some screwing into the ceiling to set the mount for a new light.
Unfortunately the light fixture Chris bought busted in his hands while he was installing it. So back to Home Depot we all went. Sara Kate loved 'driving the car.'
We got a different kind of light fixture, nothing fancy, and it was installed with no problems. So much better!!
The last thing we had to do was decide on hardware. Originally we had no knobs or pulls in the kitchen and we definitely wanted to add some. We looked at Lowe's and Home Depot and couldn't really agree on anything. Chris went by Target after school Tuesday afternoon and looked at what they had...who knew Target had that kind of stuff!! He sent me some pictures and we actually agreed a set! I went to Target that night to look at them, verify that's what I wanted, and buy them. I had a $100 gift card to Target and they were cheaper than what we saw at Lowe's or Home Depot, a win-win!! Wednesday morning Chris started installing and by Wednesday night it was all done and put back together. What a difference painting the cabinets and installing hardware made! We love how it turned out.
The final thing we were going to do was paint the walls. When we moved into our house almost every room was yellow. Over the years, we've painted almost every room and the kitchen was one of the last remaining yellow rooms. Based on the picture I was using as a guide during this whole process, I had my mind set on some variation of a light green (as you can see in the picture above, I had green paint samples leaned up against the wall). I thought painting the walls green would blend with the green counter tops and make them less noticeable. Chris was not really on board with this idea and was kind of pushing aside the idea of painting the walls. I talked to an interior designer friend at church on Sunday, told her what we had done, and told her what I wanted to do for paint. She's been to our house before, but I showed her some pictures of what the kitchen looked like after painting the cabinets and she immediately said do NOT paint green! She said paint grey and she even gave me a paint color, Ozark Shadows by Benjamin Moore. She said grey would do a better job of blending in with the green counter tops and would even mask some of the green. She showed me a fabric that had grey, green, blue, white, and chocolate brown, and she pointed out how well the colors blended together. This is the same friend who told us to paint our living room chocolate brown several years ago and we did it without hesitation, and to this day we still love it. So once again, without hesitation I said ok to the grey! I didn't think we would do it right away but Sunday afternoon Chris told me to go buy a sample, then changed his mind and said just buy a gallon. We bought Valspar Signature, latex paint, egg shell finish, in Ozark Shadows.
Originally we were going to tape Sunday night and paint Monday but somehow we ended up doing the whole thing Sunday afternoon and evening. We did touch ups Monday evening.
Below is the finished product once the tape was removed. It's a complete 180 from where the kitchen was 2 weeks ago.
Once again, here are the BEFORE pictures.
And AFTER.
Once again, here are the BEFORE pictures.
We still have to put the blinds back up, window treatments, rugs, and some decorating, but I'm really pleased with the way things turned out. Sitting in the living room and looking into the kitchen you can't even tell the counter tops are green, they look grey, and in daylight it's less obvious too. New counter tops aren't completely out of the question and is something we'll address at a later date. And I am planning to incorporate the fabric Cecily showed me to help pull things together, also.
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