The Finale: Big Kitchen Before and After

Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Don’t you hear the heavy pounding of our house’s heart? Because it is a strong and healthy heartbeat we have going on. What do I mean? I mean the heart of our home, the kitchen, is alive, strong, and oh-so-pretty! Yup, we are finally done with our list o’ projects to update our kitchen. Well, call it Phase 1 with a faraway and possible but maybe not Phase 2.  Wondering what all ensued in Phase 1? Let’s take a look.
 

Replace yellow linoleum countertops

Paint yellow cabinet white

Paint pea green garbage compactor black

Paint yellow walls tan

Put up new back splash

Put up under mount cabinet lighting (shown in the backsplash post)

Change light fixtures above the kitchen and eat-in kitchen area

Paint all hardware and hinges

 Let’s start at the very beginning; it’s a very good place to start. It begins with yellow, yellow, yellow everywhere! It was a yellow wonder of a kitchen, complete with yellow countertops, yellow tile backsplash, yellow walls, yellow florescent lights, and yellow hued cabinets.
 
After ticking off Phase 1 list and identifying Phase 2 list as painting the cabinets down the road or never (with at least a 6 month window before making any decisions), we have now landed here my friends. Behold, the power of before and after pictures. They make me drool a little bit; my apologies in advance.

 

 

 

 

Ahh, it feels so good to look at those lovely pictures. You know what feels better? Knowing that we won’t be living in a small construction zone anymore. Gone are the days of no countertops for a few days, a week of no cabinet pulls, a weekend of a cabinet doorless kitchen, and everything else that comes with updating a very prominent place in the house. It is so worth it though.

Now, we didn’t go for a complete kitchen reno, but instead went with a budget conscious kitchen spiff-up that included careful material consideration, diy-ing, and knowing when to call in the pros. It was definitely a good pace, a comfortable project list to tackle, and a good compromise of diy and  pro-paying. But that was just our style. What about you? Any big projects have you accomplished? How do you handle these projects?

Kitchen Hardware Facelift

The kitchen is done! The kitchen is done (for now)! Yahoo! It all began with this kitchen and this list:

Paint yellow cabinet white

Paint pea green garbage compactor black

Paint yellow walls tan

Put up new back splash

Put up under mount cabinet lighting (shown in the backsplash post)

Change light fixtures above the kitchen and eat-in kitchen area

Paint all hardware and hinges

Look at that beautiful crossed off list! Now, let's be realistic, every room has its neverending list of little changes and updates, but the big ones are done. Am I happy about that! I think the kitchen is probably the hardest room to renovate, since it usually is the heart of the house. It can be very disturbing to say, live without cabinet doors for a weekend or without any cabinet handles for a week. That has been how we have been living for a while. Then you put all the finishing touches on and its all worth it.

We have a big kitchen and for that I am forever grateful. It does make renovations and even small changes like hardware costly. That's wear some hard work and spray paint can save your wallet. Unfortunately for some people this is not realistic, as some hardware is undeniably outdated and shouldn't be rescued. Thankfully, our hardware was a simple, classic shape.Way to go past owners. Thanks for saving us a buck in the long run. I actually love the shape of the hardware. It matches our kitchen perfectly (once again, shoutout for the past owners for having good taste). If we had bought new hardware, I might have been tempted to go super slick and modern. However, that would have totally clashed with our kitchen.

I entered the world of painting hardware when I painted the random cabinet that we had between the kitchen and the Mego Cave. Fortunately, it all worked well and made me confident in moving forward with painting all the hardware. I laid out the steps a little bit in the aforementioned post, but I thought I would lay down my step-by-step for you so you can give it a go in your house!

Materials needed:

• Fine grit sanding blocks
• Liquid deglosser (I used Next)
• Lint free cloths
• Styrofoam
• Your favorite spray paint (I used Rustoleum's Satin Nickel)

1. Take down all the hardware. For low impact in your living style, set aside a weekend for this project. Then you don't have to live without handles for a week. It will save you many broken fingernails. Tip: Put a piece of painters tape with a number on each cabinet and then another piece with the corresponding number on the cabinet. Then you know exactly where each door goes.

2. Time to get down and dirty...well only if your hardware are as old and dirty as ours! My hands turned black as the hardware got more golden. To clean off all the years of debris and to make a good surface for the paint to stick to, I used fine grit sandpaper to clean it off.

3. Clean off the hardware with the liquid deglosser and lint free cloths. Let dry (it doesn't take long).

4. Time for painting! Set all the hardware out. I spaced them as close as possible but with enough room to allow me to maneuver around them so I could get all angles. I found that putting them close together allowed me to make the most of the spray paint since these were smaller items I was painting. As for how to paint screws without messing up the threads, I stuck them in Styrofoam. This allowed me to get the tops painting (which are exposed in our cabinets) and allow for full functionality. Spray with light, even coats. Allow enough time in between coats for drying and flipping. Here's a tip: if spray painting on a plastic drop cloth, don't spray the different coats in the same area. Unfortunately when I flipped them it the first coat peeled off the plastic and stuck to the hardware. Not a fun cleanup on that one.

5. Let them dry. I gave them at least 24 hours.

6. Time to install! You're done.

Check out this test I did before (snagging one from the white cabinet) to make sure I liked the end result. What a difference!

 

Now here are some more close-up shots of the finished product.

 

 

 

Wow. So easy and simple to write, and actually to do. It just takes time. It is so worth it though! This project saved us HUNDREDS of dollars, which is what we priced out new hardware for all of those cabinets. Not to mention, we have exposed hinges that would have been a nightmare to try and find new ones that fit the same dimensions. Otherwise we would have had to figure out how to drill new holes without wrecking our cabinets.

I love, love, love the finished product! I feel it is the icing on the cake of our mini kitchen reno and really provides a nice, modern pop on each cabinet. Wanting to see the whole kitchen in all its final glory with the changes we have made? Check back on Friday where I do the whole run-down, complete with all the before and afters!

 

How to Tan a Kitchen

No, I don't mean that we are skinning it...that thought train just gets too weird. I mean that the kitchen has literally gone tan! At least the walls have gone tan. That means the final part of our yellow kitchen is gone, gone, gone!

Here are the before pictures of the kitchen (I mean way before):

Then here is the kitchen prior to the walls being painted:

 

Now here it is in its new color!

 
This color has actually made an appearance in our house already in the main guest bedroom. We wanted a nice neutral in that room so we picked Valspar's Riviera Dune. [Sidenote: Although I love the color, sometimes I want a bigger splash of color in the guest room.] Anyways, back to the kitchen. We knew we wanted to pick a color that was neutral and blended well with the other areas of the house. You can see the kitchen walls from the living room, entry way, and the Mego Cave, so we didn't want it to compete with the other rooms with a big, bold, look-at-me lashes color (yes, no? Anyone get that Covergirl commercial reference?). One kitchen wall also butts up against our red accent wall. Based on that, we immediately ruled out a green of any shade (too Christmas-y, even in our house). We thought a nice, soft tan would be best, especially beside out cabinets. No more yellow reflecting in the cabinets. We are doing everything we can to bring out the richness and golden tones of the cabinets.

 As we were looking around at paint samples, trying and trying to figure out what color to pick, it was actually in our house the whole time. I walked into the guest bedroom one day, looked around, and thought how the color would be beautiful in the kitchen. Then I kind of forgot to mention it to Eric, until, no lie, a short while later he said, "What do you think about painting the kitchen the color of the guest bedroom?" Whoa. It was meant to be.

So one rainy Saturday morning I prepped the room: taping, puttying and peeling an old telephone line off the wall. After a first coat, a two hour-ish drying session, and second coat, I was ready to reveal the new kitchen. Isn't it amazing how color really can make a room look new?

 I love how this color just effortlessly fits into the room. I don't think people will really notice that the color has changed, which suits me just fine. It means the color is so right, that it doesn't scream “Change” at us. It just blends. I think it really makes the kitchen makeover feeling more complete. We have put our stamp on most everything in the kitchen now, which makes the house feel more like our home. Don’t you just love personalizing your space? I feel like it makes the home feel more loved and therefore it loves you back even more. Yup, I believe your spaces can definitely have a feeling. The main goal in the changes we are making our home is to make it feel more “us” and it make it the most welcoming, inviting, cozy, and comfortable home we can.

Don't before and afters just make you all happy inside?

 Let’s review the ultimate kitchen list:

• Paint yellow cabinet white
• Paint pea green garbage compactor black
• Paint yellow walls tan
• Put up new back splash
• Put up under mount cabinet lighting (shown in the backsplash post)
• Change light fixtures above the kitchen and eat-in kitchen area
• Paint all hardware and hinges

Here’s a secret for you too: the last thing to check off the list is actually done! Tune in on Wednesday to see its reveal!

Trash Talk

So rewind two-ish years ago when I made the move into our present home, I never would have guessed that certain things would become impossible to live without. Now, what do you think that is? Washer and dryer? Dishwasher? Master bathroom? Or even more fundamentally a roof and running water? Nah. None of those. Although they are pretty awesome. I’m talking about our trash compactor.

 

 

 Okay, okay I am being a little dramatic and sounding very much like a first world problem kind of girl. I am very grateful for all the wonderful things that I have and try to live a simple life, but I have most definitely fallen head over heels in love with our trash compactor. The way it strongly smashes down all of our waste into a tiny (and heavy) little square of trash…kind of gross yet kind of awesome.  With the composting and recycling that we do and with no trash service at our door (a choice because we are cheapskates budget conscious people) we can use one bag of trash for 2-3 weeks. We actually get kind of a rush when the bin looks full and then we push that little dial and here the “grrr..gog..” push of the compact working hard. Then we eagerly swing that baby open to see 50% - 75% more room appear. Seriously. We have even been known to show off the compactor skills at a party. Now I can list on my resume, “Party Skill: Trash Compacting”. No…too far? We sound a little crazy? Probably. Excellent.

Anyways, the purpose of this is not to make you install one in your kitchen (which you should) but to show you the mini-makeover we gave the trash compactor. Just a way to show our love to this wonderful appliance. Not that we didn’t love its pea green complexion…no actually we didn’t. It especially didn’t go with our other black appliances. So I found this guy:

 

 Black appliance spray paint. Genius, I say! I snatched it up (oh only about a year ago too). Obviously spray painting in the house is a no go, so we first had to extract the compactor from its resting place. The bin was pretty easy to do. It’s on wheels, and I wheeled it right out. The top panel though was hooked into place and into our electricity, so it took some careful extraction. The hubby did a fine job on this step. It really was just unplugging the connections that were carefully marked.

Then came the lovely job of cleaning a trash compactor. And while we had it out, cleaning all in and around it. I think I grumbled like I have never grumbled before. Who likes cleaning up garbage? It was necessary and at the end of the day made me feel pretty great. So I used some pretty heavy duty cleaning supplies and then some isopropyl alcohol to really get it clean.

So after all was cleaned, I had to do some minor taping. First I taped the back off to ensure no paint messed with the electrical aspects. Then I had to tape up the lovely faux-wood paneling screen. With the dials and writing on it, we decided to keep that clean for now. Finally I had to tape off the bottom of the bin, which is actually something you step on that will make the bin open for hands free garbage dumping. This thing really gets better and better, doesn’t it?

 

Duh duh duh. Ready to go, or so I thought. I read the directions as I was shaking it, getting ready to spray, and it said to lightly sand the item you were painting. So just when I was giddy with my finger on the spray bottle, I had to go and sand it. Then I had to clean it with the alcohol again. Thankfully Eric reminded me that it is all in the prep work. It really is, too. Don’t skimp on the prep work if you want a lasting result!

Finally, I was able to get my spray paint on! Word of the wise, make sure your finger isn’t in the way of the stream. It makes it come out gloppy. Ask me how I learned that one, eh? Make sure to do thin, even coats. Have a pattern to your spray painting too, so certain areas don’t receive more paint than others. You may notice that later. Here it is all painted after two coats and a 24 hour period of waiting in our basement.

Now here it is installed:

I was thrilled with the result. Thrilled I tell you! The black matches all of our other appliances perfectly and makes them all fit better together. Now some of you may ask why we left the wood paneling background? We actually like it. It adds some character and reminds us that we are fixing up an older home. We aren’t going for perfect. We are trying to make our home us, with some funk. Like my husband says, “I don’t want to live in a perfect house. It is the flaws that I end up loving.” So wise. There are probably different degrees of flaws that he loves and then others he couldn’t live with (like broken stuff) but I totally agree. The flaws and the little eccentricities make a home feel lived in and have special character.

Here we are again for a before and after:

One of my favorite and easiest updates yet! I totally recommend the appliance paint too, especially if you have older appliances. It is such an easy and inexpensive face lift! What have you been painting recently? It's definitely one of my favorite tricks of DIYing!