next up: kitchen cabinet update

ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!  the day i have finally been waiting for!  haha.  maybe not quite that dramatic.  but, we have started a new project; painting our kitchen cabinets!!!!!  i have mentioned this before, but our kitchen is perfectly fine, there's nothing wrong with it, but it is very outdated.  when we bought the house, the walls were painted a kermit the frog green, had a fleshy colored striped wallpaper accent wall complete with flowered wall paper border.  and outdated vinyl flooring.  and very orange oak cabinets.  just not my style at all.  so i've been dying to update this space, especially since we seem to spend so much time in the kitchen.  finally in december, we ripped off the wall paper, and painted the walls a nice, calming light blue.  that made a huge difference already.  and just last week, we started working on the cabinets.  i really like a light, bright kitchen, it just feels so clean and calm, and for some reason, dark cabinetry feels oppressive to me, so i had been planning on painting them white.  and then i was inspired by the two-toned cabinets, and decided that i would do a darker color on the bottom cabinets.  it took me awhile to decide which way to go because the dark lower cabinets i saw in pictures, like a dark navy, or gray, looked so nice, but then the light gray ones looked really nice, too.  so i decided to choose something in the middle, a medium gray.  one of the most popular medium gray colors is called chelsea gray by benjamin moore.  and i really liked the color.  it is a great neutral, a little pit of a taupe-y gray, definitely with some warm undertones, so i feel like it's a nice rich, cozy color.  i chose a warmer gray than i normally would because the hardwood floors in the rest of the downstairs are red-toned, warm colored acacia wood, and eventually, when we replace the vinyl flooring in the kitchen we will use the same wood flooring.  i didn't want to have a warm toned floor and cool toned gray cabinets.  but anyway, the color is so nice.     and actually, in december, i went to benjamin moore to talk to someone about paint, primer, cleaner, etc, because they have a paint called Advance that is highly recommended for cabinets--it creates a very hard finish, and has self-levelers, so it dries with a smooth finish.  i got all the info i needed, and on christmas break hubby and i were planning on painting the cabinets.  but then we realized, it would take forever for the newly painted cabinets to dry and cure, and decided it was a better project for the summer.

so a couple weeks ago, we got a pint of primer and paint in both the colors i picked out, a nice hybrid foam/flock roller that is perfect for cabinets and some tsp.  we wanted to do a trial run on the cabinets above the desk area that we use in the kitchen as our coffee station.  hubby and my father-in-law sanded, filled the holes and cleaned the cabinet boxes and doors, and i started painting.  the painting doesn't take so long, but i applied one coat of primer, and 3 coats of paint, and each coat requires 16 hours drying time before a re-coat----and this has to be done on both sides of the cabinet doors.  but the result has been so nice.  there were a few issues that i had to work out that i will write about in another post.  but already, the area looks so much better!  i just put the last coat of paint on everything on saturday, so perhaps on sunday we can add the hardware and see how it looks.  the hardware is another thing i will write a post about later.  anyway, we still have a long way to go, but i'm hoping we can get it done in a couple weeks---since our only time is when the kids are asleep.

here is a before picture; the kitchen in all its green walled, wall papered, orange oak glory:

here you can see the lovely vinyl floors

some more shots of the nice, crisp white:

here are some of the inspiration pictures that basically sold me on the color chelsea gray:

 nice, right?!  anyway, so after the paint is done, then the hardware installation, and i want to add some quarter round or pencil molding or something like that along with some flat, wider lumber to make the sides of the cabinets and the kitchen peninsula look chunkier.  and then i can finally get the pull out organizing system for some of the cabinets.  i'm so stoked!

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