The No-Demo Kitchen Reno!
Before + After: From Country to Cape Cod
When we moved into this house, one of the spaces that first caught our attention was the kitchen. In spite of the fact that this house was only built in 2002, it somehow oozed 1990s decor... and NOT in a good way! The cabinets were honey oak, the tiles were 6" white squares, and the floor was 12" square beige travertine. Dull, dull, DULL! To boot, the previous owners had stencilled green ivy all around the window above the kitchen sink, including over the outlet covers. Who knew that you could even get ivy stencils after the turn of the millennium?!
Here's the best -- yes, best! -- before shot, so you can really pick up what I'm puttin' down...
Believe it or not, the real estate market was so HOT in 2013 that this picture was considered a good representation of the house's best assets! Yikes! Needless to say, the kitchen was top of our list for renovation when we moved in.
But, life takes over, and with two kids under two, the amount of time and energy we could devote to a full-blown renovation was limited! Plus, I have limited tolerance for living in a construction zone, so we had to figure out a way to update that country kitchen into something that didn't make us cringe each time we walked into the room!
So, this summer, I decided to fully test my design skills and finally pul the trigger. I had been crushing on a slate blue kitchen I saw in HGTV magazine last year, and couldn't get the image out of my mind. I accidentally stumbled into Peinture, my now favorite paint store, which stocks Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and discovered my new passion: giving new life to all pieces wooden!
I have a schwack (technical term) of wooden furniture that has been passed down through my family and I REFUSE to get rid of it. It's part of my design philosophy: use what you have, upcycle it if you can, and continue to let those pieces tell the story of your family and who you are! So, I decided that the cabinets could be my guinea pig. With the magazine picture as my inspiration, I set off to Peinture and sought their guidance on just how to make the EXACT shade of slate blue that I was envisioning. Their peeps are amazing -- I can't tell you how many times I have been in there with questions, testing colors and mixing different shades and tints and badgering them endlessly!
Here's the how-to portion of the paint selection: grab whatever chalk paint colors strike your fancy (in this case, it was Napoleon Blue, Old White and Graphite). Then, mix varying proportions (my custom mix was 1:2:2) and test them on a piece of wax paper to see how they look when they dry. Next, stock up on a ton of foam brushes (you can usually get a value pack at hardware stores), and finally, use the giant plastic syringes to mix and remix that perfect proportion of paint color, over and over again! :-)
The project took me a few weeks -- it was hard to get long stretches of uninterrupted time, with two toddlers in the house who always wanted to 'help Mommy' -- but the results were INSTANTANEOUS! Here's the first cabinet I tackled -- our pantry:
I found the best results came from two or three coats of paint, applied with foam brushes, and left to dry in between. I used the side of the brush frequently, just as the paint was tacky dry, to smooth the paint down into the deep grains of the oak cabinets. I was amazed that this gave the coverage that it did! The end result was a very matte look, but once we applied the Clear Wax, the cabinets had a subtle sheen which looked as though they were commercially produced. Very fine grain lines still show through, displaying that they are in fact wood cabinets, but they no longer have that distractingly orange tone or country style to them! It's amazing how much we love the style of the cabinet doors, now that the solid color allows the detail to show through!
We couldn't overlook the yellowing white appliances for very long, so took advantage of some holiday sales to get new stainless steel appliances -- that was definitely the biggest splurge of the project!
Here are the after pictures -- so proud!
In total, we probably spent around $800 on paint and supplies. Not bad, considering that these cabinets have an average of three coats of paint, and two coats of wax on them to seal them. An entire kitchen renovation without smashing a cabinet box, ceramic tile, or anything else! This No-Demolition-Kitchen-Renovation was an amazing and totally manageable fix to a boring and severely outdated kitchen!
