One of my favorite rooms in our house has turned out to be our kitchen. I am not sure if it is just the kitchen, or the kitchen/living room combo. I love how bright our kitchen looks compared to our dark living room.
To fully appricate how much better this looks, let me show you a few photos of how the kitchen area looked when Danny bought the house.
Beautiful, huh?
For starters Danny (and friends) painted the trim in both the kitchen and living room white. I'm sure they had to de-funk-ie-fy it first. I can only imagine how much grease and gunk was all over them. From what I understand painting this brown trim was a chore, and took like 15 million coats (that number keeps growing).
He also had our friend, Cody, help take down the post separating the living room and kitchen and create a new bar top/counter top. This is probably my favorite thing he did, I love how open our kitchen and living room are!
And...this is where I come into the picture :)
When I started dating Danny the kitchen looked similar to this...
I didn't have any before pictures, but you can see the living room was painted a very neutral color (almost pinkish) and the kitchen had lovely white trim and a warm tan color on the walls.
Here is where we are now...
For starters I waited until Danny was working and informed him I was going to paint the kitchen...HA! I have learned that if he is busy he doesn't debate colors with me...and I get to pick!
I loved the color in our bedroom so much I decided to try it in the kitchen. I knew the color needed to be light in order to contrast to the super dark color I had just painted in the living room...and I already had the blue dresser (toy box) that looked so good with the brown paint.
FYI the paint color is Martha Stewart River Mist. It is my favorite color in our entire house, second is the gray in Houston's room!
After painting the kitchen blue I realized that our table looked super ORANGE. It looked awful, the blue looked amazing and the touched up white trim (that makes 15 million and one coats) just made the kitchen feel so much bigger and refreshed. So what do I do? I run to home depot and grab a few things.
I chose dark brown latex paint, a super dark stain (honestly I don't remember if I went with Jacobean or not) and polycrylic.
First thing I did was text Danny and inform him that I was repainting the kitchen table. Then I sanded the entire table down. To my knowledge when you use chalk paint you do not have to sand...but it made me feel better...so I did it.
Next I grabbed a small plastic cup and our Stone's Chalk paint additive that I got at The Junque Yard . If you have never been there go check them out. I have to avoid that store...or else I will spend every dime I own.
You mix one cup of latex paint with the chalk additive and stir good. This is the worst part, you can't mix a lot of it up at once because it gets chunky, funky, and gross. Once it is mixed up good (no chunks) you paint. It covers really well and goes a heck of a lot further than I thought it would...
I decided that I didn't want the table to be brown all over, so I went outside and found a gallon of white latex paint. I painted the bottom legs of the chairs and table white. I wish I had a photo of how bright and crazy this looked...dark brown and bright white. I honestly got a little nervous at this point!
Next step was to stain the table...make sure that the paint was dry and add stain. Lessons learned...wear gloves, throw away any rags used, and make sure you are in a well ventilated area.
I had our doors and windows shut because outside looked like this...
Needless to say...by time I was finished staining the table I was feeling good!
Anyway, after you stain the table you distress it. I wanted the legs to look distressed to help hide any damage they would get from my boys! If you are a mom of boys you understand that NOTHING I repeat NOTHING is safe if your house. If it looks pretty..you better take a picture of it because it will not last.
Once the table is stained you can either wax it or seal it with polycrylic. I went with polycrylic...it is more protective and easier to apply. Plus it smells like tanning oil...and in the middle of winter it was fun to dream about the beach!
And viola...you have a finished table. I love the way the legs turned out...dark stain on white paint. This table isn't a permanent piece for our house...but it is much more tolerable now that it isn't orange!
I updated a few other things in the kitchen. I added under cabinet lighting, we changed the counter tops, light fixtures, and I added the adorable monogram.
The under cabinet lights are so easy. I ordered LED light strings from Amazon and the adaptor, dimmer switch, and extra wiring. All of this cost less than 25.00 and was super easy to install. The hardest part was soldering the wires to the LED strips...so I sucker my brother into helping with that.
The LED strips are supposed to be self adhesive. In my experience they did not stick well...so I used hot glue and just added a dot ever other inch and reinforced them.
You will be amazed at the difference that the lights made! I love them, and they use such a low voltage that we leave them on all the time.
The monogram I put behind the stove came from Etsy. The shop I purchased it from is no longer open...but I am sure you can find another person who sells something similar.
So there you have it. Our kitchen re-do.
Danny did replace all of the appliances before I came around...I think that made a bigger difference in our kitchen than any paint or lighting we added.
I still want to add a curtain or decorative molding across the window about the sink. We have a light up there that is an eye sore...but I haven't found anything that truly inspires me yet...
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