Weekend Update

We were busy little bees this weekend. Not only did Mike have class yesterday and today, he also kindly agreed to enter into a painting adventure with me which started on Friday night.

The mission: To paint our kitchen; and I'm happy to report we accomplished our goal.

As you know, we remodeled out kitchen when we first moved in. At that time we decided to go with yellow but after living a year in our house and updating the decor here and there (more on that here) I started to realize the yellow had to go for a few reasons: 1. It just didn't go with the rest of our house where the palette in each room fits within a range of 4-5 colors and 2. The lighting in our kitchen isn't stellar and the yellow made it feel a bit closed in and dark. So we repeated the motto: Out with the old and in with the new all week last week so when Friday rolled around we were ready to go.

I thought it'd be fun to actually to a before and after comparison between when we bought the house, our remodel, and then the re-painting. Enjoy =)

Here's the kitchen prior to moving in (May 2011):

 

 





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's the kitchen after our remodel (September 2011):

 

 



 

Kitchen Re-Painted (October 2012):

 

 

 



 

 

I knew I wanted to try a grey so I bought a few samples and painted portions of each sample on the wall around the kitchen. We lived with each sample for a week to see what it looked like in all kinds of light and decided on Cinderblock by Valspar. Oh yeah, and we striped one wall! I'm actually quite impressed that we even agreed to do this (I had the idea and Mike was all for it) because this is kind of outside the box for us. I was also super pleased with how they turned out. I did some research on painting stripes and learned a few tricks of the trade that worked very well. First, paint the entire wall using the lighter of the two stripe colors. Next, tape off the areas for the contrast color. Then seal the tape by rolling the lighter color over the taped edges. Allow this to dry then apply 2 coats of the contrast color. Let the first coat dry completely then remove the tape while your second coat is still drying. Our lines are crisp and clean with no bleeding or drips. Anywhere. I'm telling you, if I can do this anyone can. As for the colors for the stripes, the color we used everywhere else in the kitchen was the mid-tone on the tri-color paint card. I used the lighter and darker shade from the same paint card to stay in the same family but offer more contrast too.

 

We're really happy with the end result. In fact, I've spent a fair amount of time today just admiring our work. Just for fun, here's another before and after comparison:

 

 

 

I'd consider this a job well done. I hope you had a great weekend too!