The kitchen - B&A

Well, one out of a million ain't bad! ha!

I feel like I really have about a million projects that I need to do around the house and property. I've decided that my flower bed area by the garage isn't finished after all. And I didn't get very far on the other flower bed area by the gate. I did, however, finish my kitchen. I think. I'm still not 100% satisfied with it, but in order to get there I need to spend money on decorative things, new hardware and new lighting fixtures that I just don't want to spend on right now. So, for all intensive purposes, I'm going to consider the kitchen "finished".

My goal was to paint/finish the kitchen and my master bath before I host Turkey day for my family. I thought it was a very reasonable goal since, at the time I decided on it, I had over a month to do it. I was not anticipating my current addiction that has sucked the last week and a half from my life. Not that I mind too much, I have totally enjoyed the ride. But I'm a little disappointed in myself that it's not looking so promising to actually reach my goal. I don't like not accomplishing goals. Especially when they are so reasonable! I know I still have a week and a half which should be plenty of time to paint a bathroom, but there are several reasons that I don't see this happening. 1. I still haven't finished the whole series. I have about 400 pages left in the last book, which comes out to probably the next two evenings being mostly committed to reading. 2. The bathroom requires a lot of prep work. I'll post the before pictures when I've got it finished, but this bathroom was, umm...cluttered. To say the least. 3. I still haven't even picked what color I want to paint in there! I'm having a really hard time with that because the counter is burgundy. The bathroom used to be Pepto Bismol pink. No joke. They changed it to a decent off-white/beige color, that I actually kind of like, but it is a little dark and dingy and after everything was taken off the walls, I just need to paint. There is no two ways about it. I'm also having a hard time with choosing a color because we want to change basically everything in there. Soon. The counter, sinks, mirrors, hardware, fixtures, flooring...everything. It's all got to go! But it can't right now. 4. I'm kinda sick of painting. There is just as much edging and crap to work around in this bathroom as there was in the kitchen and I just don't wanna!

So that's my story of the bathroom thus far. Now, back to the kitchen. The kitchen is nice. A little quirky, but totally do-able. The appliances were all fairly new and matched. Wohoo! I wasn't exactly thrilled with the brown and mauve color scheme, but it wasn't awful. The floor definately needs to go, but that's a big, expensive project for another day. The cabinets are real wood, but had these weird top cabinets that served absolutely no purpose since they were wedged into the ceiling and didn't really open and close. I planned to paint, had picked out my colors and was thinking about my plan of attack for prepping one day. I was wondering about the top cabinets because they were wedged against the ceiling and thinking about just taking them off to paint, since that would probably be easiest. Then it occured to me. I could take them off and...LEAVE them off. *gasp* As soon as the thought occured to me, I knew it was fabulous. I hadn't ever really had an issue with them, but they were kinda weird and didn't serve any purpose whatsoever. Plus, that would give me some room to decorate above the cabinets. Granted it is only about 10 inches, but it's enough room to give the kitchen some character. That night a girlfriend came over for our weekly date night and helped me tear my kitchen apart. We could not believe the difference just taking those top cabinets off made! It was huge! Even with the mauve paint still there, it totally opened the kitchen up, made it so much lighter and brighter! We were all grins looking at our handy work!

In the picture to the left you can see the color the kitchen was. They didn't paint behind the top cabinets. There is also the little phone shelf, which was kinda handy, but once it was down for painting, I couldn't bring myself to put it back up. You can also see the yellow stand mixer that inspired the color.

Over the weekend I got it painted with the help of my mom for most of it and then the boyfriend on the second day. It was a lot of work, but we got it finished. It took me a couple more days to get all of the touching up done and pull the edging tape off and then a few more days after that to properly clean and scrub everything and get it all put back together. And then, as is the nature of a kitchen, it got dirty and it's taken me a while to get it really cleaned up nice again so I could get the "after" pics.

We painted it "Candlelight Ivory". It's basically white, but with a touch of yellow. I have a KitchenAid Stand mixer that is a beautiful light yellow color, so that was the inspiration for that. Pretty much everything I have for my kitchen is yellow or blue. I also wanted something that was clean and bright looking and would maybe reflect a bit nicer tone in the cabinets. They looked kind of yellow and weird with the mauve. I think I accomplished those missions. I like it! Though now it seems a little blah to me. I would like to find a cutesy theme for it, something to brighten it up and have some points of interest, instead of just the white walls. I am having trouble finding things that go with yellow and blue, and brown, and black, and allows me to keep the wire rooster that I love and is currently the only thing on the wall though. It's a lot to coordinate! But I'm still considering it finished, since all the "hard labor" is done. Now it's just details left.

So one down...a million or so to go! :-)