so the cook said: The Power of Paint

Now that my kitchen is almost "finished," I thought I would share a few Before & After shots. I say "finished" lightly, because we all know I'll keep tweaking and changing things...it brings me joy. I still hope to add a dark-toned bamboo shade to the back door, hang some more art, and possibly do something different to the window over the sink.

But I am willing to call it semi-finished because the colors now make sense to me. We bought our house a few years ago - it had been a foreclosure that someone had fixed up. I'm sure color choices were made quickly - and since no one was actually living here, it didn't really matter. It wasn't awful...it just didn't seem to "fit."

Well, the wall color wasn't awful - but I was NOT a fan of the cabinets. The cabinets had been "refinished" but the orange-goopy stain job wasn't working for me. I already had my red kitchen items, and I thought that the orange-toned wood needed to go.

I told Jeremiah I would leave the wall color (for a while) if he would help me with the cabinets. I am the painter...so he normally doesn't care if I repaint rooms because I do all the painting and clean-up myself. It's fun to me. But I knew I would need help taking down the cabinet doors and sanding off this goopy stain job.

So, for the first week or two in our house, we worked hard on the cabinets. I would work all day, then come home to paint or tape or sand. I was so excited about the white - in the kitchen, I knew I would want it to be clean looking. The more white we painted, the better it looked.

My mother-in-law helped sooo much with the cabinets. Even to this day, when she comes to visit, she usually says, "I am so glad we got rid of those orange cabinets!!"

For a few years, I lived with the light blue walls. It seemed a little Fourth-of-July-ish with my red accessories. But I waited patiently. I thought about changing out the light fixture, I thought about painting my table or my chairs...I dreamed about a lot of things. It seemed there were too many colors....blue walls, white cabinets, red accessories, black appliances, brown counter tops, wood table, etc. Then, I cam came across the perfect wall color. (Check out the inspiration kitchen here). They had the wood, black, white...and bright colored accessories. A gray-beige could work!

I went to the store and picked up swatches of a few different shades of "greige." I looked hard to find something that would go well with the different brown tones in the room without looking just beige. I wanted it to have gray tones as well to accent the black appliances and my black chairs. Finally, when I thought I had found a winner, I purchased a small sample pot. I painted about 5 different areas in the kitchen. I wanted to look at it under different lights and at different times of the day. Once I was certain about my choice, I bought the gallon of paint. I couldn't wait until nap time the next day! I was able to get the whole room painted in 3 naps! (That's mommy-talk for a day and a half.) I bought a good paint with primer included. I had to go over a few areas twice, but the whole room took about 3/4 of a gallon.

Now, my red items look better and all the other parts make sense. The light fixture actually seems to coordinate with the room! I no longer wanted to paint my chairs white...