It’s deer hunting season, so do you know what that means? Renovations and redecorating!!
The moment Jim left to go deer hunting, I started working on the kitchen…
Look what happened in TWO days!
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| Before and After Side by Side |
What a difference, huh?
Now, I will admit the upper left-hand picture is from a couple years ago, but surprisingly, I didn’t have a more recent before picture from that angle. Had I known that, I would have taken more before pictures.
What you probably can’t tell from the above pictures is that the walls have all been painted also. They are very close to the original color. I wasn’t unhappy with the contrast of the color before, I just wasn’t happy with the blue undertone of the old color. It didn’t coordinate well with the living room color. The new color is Valspar Celery Root. It’s a bit more grey/green/beige than the old color which was Olympic Frosty Pine. (The Frost Pine is still in my laundry room, and I do not have plans to change that.)
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| Wide angle of the entire kitchen… Yes, that is my WHOLE kitchen! |
Of course, the biggest change is the lower cabinets. I hadn’t planned on doing that while Jim was gone, but once the walls were painted, I decided to go ahead and tackle that project too. I pretty much followed the same process that I did on the upper cabinets a couple years ago, but this time I didn’t use the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations. I will say, the job was much easier with the Rustoleum than it was with regular paint, and if I do something like this again, I’ll spring for the Rustoleum.
One of the changes I’m especially happy with is I changed the handles on the drawers. I found these wonderful glass handles from the 1940s on Etsy that I ordered about a month ago. I’ve been wanting to install them but wanted to wait until I painted the cabinets because of the holes from the old knobs needed to be filled. I just LOVE the new handles!
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| New Handles from the 1940s! |
I liked the old knobs. They were also glass. But they were brand new, not vintage, and I think you could tell. The lady I bought the handles from on Etsy said you could feel a warmth from the handles, and it’s true. They’ve had a life, and I think that you can feel that when you touch them. I don’t know…maybe that sounds crazy, but it makes me smile when I think of it.
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| Old knobs on the drawers. |
I used the old drawer knobs on the doors below the sink. I kind of like using all the different glass knobs. I think it’s kind of fun, and give the cabinets a ‘collected’ look. Plus, I still liked the other knobs. I didn’t want to get rid of them, so I thought they would work there because the tip-out drawers under the sink don’t have handles. It kind of makes the kitchen sink cabinet stand out just a bit.
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| Knobs on Sink Cabinet |
In case you didn’t notice, I used the beadboard wallpaper on the cabinet doors. I love that stuff, but I’m not thrilled with the Allen and Roth brand. The reason why is because of where they put the seam. The kind I used before had the seam in the ‘bead’, so it didn’t show hardly at all when you butted two pieces together. The Allen and Roth brand has the seam in the middle of a ‘board’, so the seam really shows no matter how careful you are about matching up the two pieces. If I get it to use on a wall, I’ll get the Style Selections brand from Lowe’s, which is what I used before.
Back to the kitchen! I also painted the rubber baseboards white as you can see in the Before and After below. Those will eventually be changed for real baseboards, but that won’t be done until we tackle the floors. In the meantime, I was tired of looking at the ugly dark brown. The white makes the kitchen seem lighter and cleaner. Don’t you agree that it looks much better?
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| Before and After – Check out the baseboard |
I wish the difference in the wall color stood out more because it really did make a huge difference. Maybe you can kind of tell the difference. The new color is much more neutral, but it still looks strong enough to stand on its own.
The kitchen isn’t finished yet, but I’m loving it more and more with every little change!
So what do you think? Let me know because Jim’s only response was “It’s okay. I can live with it.” LOL!