Our "New" Kitchen

Even though our kitchen still isn't finished, I think I'm to the point where I can show you a piece of it. Our house had the original builder-grade cabinets in the kitchen. They are some type of laminate with a weird glaze on them. I've always hated them and hoped to update them.

I did research on painting cabinets for about ten years before I finally made the commitment. Paint is just so unreliable. The first piece of furniture I ever painted was my kitchen table, and even though I loved it, it just didn't hold up well - and that was fine because it was an old hand-me-down table. The paint extended my enthusiasm for the table, and when the day came to get rid of it, I was at peace because it had lived a good life (I actually painted it twice while I had it). But it was that experience that taught me that paint does not solve all problems. It can ding, it can peel, it can get water damage, and so much more. It needs to be babied and touched up regularly. I wasn't sure I wanted to do that to my cabinets. I definitely didn't want to paint them and have the paint end up chipping all over the place. So for the past decade, I've skeptically looked at tutorials for painting cabinets. I've read about many different techniques and types of paints - never believing any of it was good enough to be true.

Over the years I've tried some different paints on different surfaces, but I didn't come across a type of paint that I would trust on something as important as kitchen cabinets. A couple of years ago, I started experimenting with chalk paint on various pieces - both homemade and brand name (Annie Sloan). I was hoping that I'd found miracle paint. Alas, I love chalk paint, but it is still fragile. A million online tutorials will lead you to believe that chalk paint is indestructible, but I have several pieces of furniture in my house that prove otherwise. Chalk paint still needs to be babied and touched up, but it is definitely better than plain latex paint.

It has become my opinion that chalk paint is perfect for updating something that you A) buy from the thrift store or pick up on the side of the road B) would otherwise get rid of or C) want to put a band-aid on to make it last 5-10 more years.

With that, I decided to use chalk paint on my kitchen cabinets. It's a band-aid I've put on something I want to make last ten more years.

I let my friend take the risk first. She painted her piano a few years ago, and I was amazed at how cute it turned out. I waited for it to get damaged, but other than her child coloring on it, it held up pretty well. Then this same friend painted her cabinets (her brand new cabinets in her brand new house - I could have died!) I watched her cabinets closely for a year, and they were actually doing pretty well. The amount of damage her cabinets had after a year was minimal, and I decided that I could probably maintain painted cabinets for ten years or so as long as I remain proactive about keeping them clean and touched up.

(In ten years, I'll report back and let you know if I'm eating my words).

I actually debated between using Annie Sloan chalk paint or General Finished milk paint. I ended up choosing the Annie Sloan chalk paint because it could be purchased locally in a store where I could see samples of the paint colors in person. The local stockist has a variety of furniture pieces in her store that have been painted with different colors and techniques, so it was nice to be able to go in and look at stuff that had been painted in the colors I was considering. If I'd gone the milk paint route, I would have purchased the paint online, sight unseen. In the end, that was just too risky.

I ended up selecting French Linen for the bottom cabinets (this is the color my friend used on hers, so I was piggy backing off her good color choice). I really wished I could do a white for my entire kitchen, but the bottom cabinets just seemed too risky. For one, the floor plan of my kitchen lends itself to many spills on the bottom cabinets while cooking. The other problem is that my kids sit on the bar stools and kick the counter. So the French Linen seemed more practical (I also considered doing a dark charcoal (not quite black), but that would have required mixing my own color, and I didn't want to do anything too experimental. I've never been fully sold on the two-tone cabinet trend, but in order to be practical and still have some white cabinets, I decided to go with two-tone cabinets with white on top. Annie Sloan has two whites - Pure White and Old White. Pure White was too white, and Old White was too creamy for what I wanted, so I mixed them 1:1.

I'm not going to give a full run-down of the painting process, but I ended up doing two coats of French Linen on the bottom cabinets and FOUR coats of white on the top cabinets. In hindsight, I now know that it's hard to get good coverage with white paint on cabinets. It took nearly double the paint to do my top cabinets. I love the way the white looks, but I would caution anyone about the amount of work it requires to paint cabinets white. I still keep finding spots where I need to put another coat on. It also shows flaws very easily - I'm not talking dirt, per se - they seem to wash up just fine - but brush strokes and variations in color stand out.

I decided not to wax them. At the recommendation of the stockist, I used General Finishes High Performance Top Coat (four coats). The stockist told me that she recommends using that on kitchen cabinets rather than wax, although it's still okay to use wax (my friend used wax on hers).

In addition to a fresh paint job, we also updated our hardware with pray paint. I kept all of the same hinges and half of the knobs. I used the old knobs on the drawers but put new handles on the swinging doors. I spray painted everything with Rustoleum metallic oil-rubbed bronze. I love the way it looks, but it will not hold up long-term. The paint rubs off and chips with use. Luckily I spent less than $20 on the new hardware and the paint.

We moved the cabinet over the stove up and forward so we could get the microwave off our counter. Hanging the new microwave was one of the highlights of this project. We'd wanted to hang a microwave over the stove from the minute we moved in, but there wasn't enough room (plus there are regulations for such things, and our kitchen didn't meet those guidelines). Scotty had to do some electrical work to make it all possible.

Scotty also added crown molding to the tops of the cabinets. It made our cabinets look so much better!

The walls in the kitchen (formerly a bright blue) are painted Oatlands Subtle Taupe from Valspar. This is the color in our living room as well (for the first time in 14 years, my kitchen and living room match!)

Three months later, we are very happy with how the cabinets turned out. They have some dings and scratches from installing the new floor. We had to remove the subfloor so the floor would be even from the kitchen to the living room (the kitchen floor was higher), and that required us to chisel away the subfloor against the cabinets. It was quite the chore!

Here is how it looks now:

A quick comment on the red stools: I love these stools so much because they stack! Our kitchen is really small, so bar stools make things even tighter. Being able to stack the bar stools and move them to the side is really nice. I bought them earlier this year before we planned on redoing the kitchen. I was thinking about selling them because I didn't think they would look good with the new kitchen, but now I love them! I've always had a special place in my heart for a pop of red!

A quick comment on the floor: I got our flooring from Sam's Club. It's Select Surfaces brand in Driftwood. The normal price is $1.75 per square foot. We bought it when it was on special savings for $5 off per box. That made it $1.35 per square foot!!! We have two other rooms in our house with laminate flooring from Sam's Club, and we've been very happy with it. We ran into some issues because we have several spots on our floor that aren't even. Scotty had to do a fair amount of sanding in the kitchen, and we've had to put some cushion under some spots, but we're getting there (we are currently installing the same flooring in the living room, so the entire main floor of our house will be the same.

Kitchen projects left to do:

• Finish some patchwork on one of the walls
• Add quarter-rounds to the bottoms of the cabinets
• Finish painting (there's a corner over the stairs that I can't reach, and I still haven't painted behind the fridge)
• Replace the trim around the floors, doors, and window
• Touch up the cabinets
• Refinish our table
• Build a banister
• Hang stuff on the wall (not pictured)