Before & After- Our Kitchen

We moved into our house in May of 2008. It's lovely and has nice finishes and some interesting architectural detail. The kitchen? Never my favorite. Not so much. The cabinets are beautifully made. It was hard to see any of the good about them with the oak stain that the builder chose. The combination of the orangey stain with the orangey countertops (formica) and hardware made the kitchen a place I didn't really want to be.


Kitchen in 2008

I tried to talk my husband into painting them white. At the time, he was NOT on board. I think he was worried that it wouldn't look good. Oddly enough, I was doing interior design at that point in my life. Yet he did not trust me. What does that mean??? ;-)

I painted the walls a medium brown color from Sherwin Williams and it made the cabinets and countertops less offensive. We kept it like that for a good 3 years. We had a fan in over the stove that never really did much, so every time we cooked, our whole house would smell. Good times.

We bought a hood and vent in Spring of 2011. We decided to overhaul the kitchen finally, but our plan was to remove the cabinets above the stove, add some open shelving and stain the cabinets dark.

The prepping of the cabinets was NOT fun. Lots of sanding. Lots of dust. Noisy hand sanders. Dogs unhappy. More sanding. More dust. I felt defeated some days. And my arms felt weak.

Mid project: My husband starts having weird hip pain and after a few months of physical therapy that doesn't work, he needs surgery. What was awesome: Our kitchen was in the in-between stage. We had all of these plans and so the doors were all sanded and in the garage. We had lovely "Open" everything, so you could see ALL of our junk for months and months.

I finally realized I couldn't stand looking at it anymore, but didn't have the SkillZ to stain everything myself. Maybe I'm great at it, but I've never stained more than a table (it did turn out great!) but I didn't feel comfortable. So..as my husband was recovering I told him I wanted to paint them white. Cue mystical music and bright white lights.."ahhh.ahhh..ahhhh.."- He said YES! And so it is.

During. How "awesome" is it that you can see everything we own?

I would be lying if I said the painting was fun. It wasn't. Many days I had our puppy angrily crying while I was painting for a few hours. He stuck his head in the paint a few different times and sported a cute yet strange white beard-like thing for a few days. I did about three coats. Could it use four? Probably. But after a certain point you just have to ball it and move on.


During

The greatest part? I no longer hate the countertops! They don't bother me at all! I also realized I even LIKE the original copperish hardware. The whole kitchen is so much brighter and pleasing. It also lost the country look that I don't enjoy. I love country style, just not oak cabinets and oak stains. Not my thing.

We bought the hood online for about $300 which I thought was a steal! The magnetic steel backsplash was found on eBay. The shelving is just inexpensive but fabulous Lack shelves from Ikea. I also "splurged" and bought a gray rug from Ikea for $20!! I sound terribly cheap, don't I? I honestly love the rug. I saw another that was "eh" and was $200, so I chose the $20 pretty rug. Said rug is not shown in these photos yet. Paint was from Home Depot. Just the regular Behr paint. No built in primer, it wasn't needed. It was low VOC which was great as it never smelled and I never felt goofy after painting for a few hours.

Now: I LOVE it. I feel like a bit of a weirdo sometimes as I just sit and stare at it from different angles. I also probably take too many photos of it. I showed pics of it AGAIN to my best friend yesterday. I'm sure it's getting sickening, but it makes me soo happy! I also have a great sense of accomplishment. I would be lying if I said I had any interest in painting anything for a while. I do not.


After!

Curtis seems to like it a lot better too!

So happy it's done! I think the total cost for everything (paint, sanding paper, Ikea items, miscellaneous items, hood, backsplash, etc.) was less than $850. Holla!!