Saturday, September 29, 2012

The Kitchen Reveal

We've really been enjoying our new house and the changes we have made so far. We have been here for a month and a half now and our house definitely feels like our home. The kitchen and dining room have probably had the biggest change. Again, all we have done at this stage is paint, but it has made all the difference.

Before, the kitchen was a butter/lemon yellow with a *lovely* fruit wall paper border with matching brass and ceramic hardware on the cabinets. The cabinets were an orange-y stained wood and because the kitchen is so small, it made the space feel very dark and cramped. We opted to paint our cabinets a cream colour and we chose a very light taupe colour for the wall. To add some colour we painted our kitchen window trim red, but I'd still like to see some more colour added to the space. As for the cabinet hardware, instead of buying it all new, which was not in our budget, I decided to try spray painting them and had awesome results!

Here is the kitchen before (sorry about the bad pictures, but it should give you a general sense for how it looked before)...









Painting kitchen cabinets are annoying. I'm so glad we had my parents helping us and I'm also glad we don't have a big kitchen. This job could have been so much more irritating otherwise. To prep the cabinets for painting we sanded them down and then primed them. They then got two coats of a CIL melamine paint in Behr's 'Creamy White' (same colour as our bedroom). We painted the walls in a Martha Stewart colour called 'Gull' and we painted the window trim in another Martha colour called ' Maine Lobster'. One wall in the dining room was painted with chalkboard paint. I think our son, Parker, can have a lot of fun with this when he is older, as can I! To fix up our cabinet hardware I soaked them in TSP, rinsed them and then gave them several thin coats of a satin black spray paint. So, after all that, here is how the kitchen looks...














So far I love it! It feels much lighter and much more our style. I especially have fun with the chalkboard wall. What is on there right now is actually something I've copied from this blog. Like I mentioned earlier, I would like to add a little more colour, particularly to the dining room. I have a print on the way that I think will look great in the room and will add some colour. Of course, there are other little details I would like to work on, but it is a work in progress and I'm happy with where it is at right now!

And now for a little side-by-side comparison...



So there you have it! Our kitchen redo. Next up, the living room! 

Hope you have a wonderful autumn weekend!

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