A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in my kitchen, and it dawned on me that the kitchen, powder room, and back mudroom were the last 3 rooms in the house that I haven't done *anything* to since buying this place. Sure, there were new baseboards put in the kitchen 4 years ago, and the swinging bar doors were removed the first night I owned the place, but other than that, it's sat. Every once in awhile I'd fill in some cracks in the plaster walls, but nothing else.
So I started reading online about simple DIY ways to make over a kitchen. I'm not thrilled about my counter tops. I found tons of info about how to faux finish your existing laminate counters [what I have] into something that looks like granite. I looked at people's before and after project pics, shopped online for a product called environtex that seals your faux paint job up with super high gloss, etc. But that seemed a little time consuming for me...I mean, I have this weird old school version of an undermount sink with this metal trim thing around the top edge...how was I going to not mess that up? Plus, someday, in the distant future, I might want to completely change the layout of the kitchen...and then the counters would just have to be torn out anyways. And I couldn't decide on a color. So I decided to leave the counters as is.
The next thing I did was take a shutter off the window inside the kitchen that looks into the mudroom so I could get a paint match. YEARS ago when I first bought a heat gun, the very first place I tried it was on a door in the kitchen. That was a learning experience. Turns out that door had never been anything BUT painted. And the paint I took off didn't really want to come off. It was a stinky learning experience. All the trim/shutters/cabinets/doors in the kitchen had been painted DECADES ago...a kinda buttercream color. There was no way I was going to be able to find that color sitting on a shelf. It took me awhile to figure out what the easiest thing to remove from the kitchen would be..and when it came down to it, it was the shutters. They did a near perfect match at the home improvement store in town. I was so happy when I came home. I covered up that 5 year old heat gun experiment, and painted the 4 year old base board to finally match everything else.
Cost of one quart of semi gloss butter cream paint - $8.00
After a night painting all the trim and patches that haven't matched in YEARS, I decided I needed to find a good color for the walls of the kitchen. Last year I discovered the paint colors at Pottery Barn. I was in Des Moines for a quilt show, and stopped at a mall on the way home and on the counter there were copies of the latest catalog, and paint chip booklets. I spent the whole ride home oooh-ing and ahh-ing over the colors. Well, those catalogs and paint chips have sat by my bed ever since, and I decided to just go for it, with the kitchen. The color that I liked the most was a dark brownish/greenish/gray..called "Texas Leather".
The image to the left is from their catalog.
So, I thought, it looks good with cream trim. And I can kinda picture it working in my kitchen. So I went for it.
And I absolutely love it.
It has instantly updated and cleaned up my kitchen. No more blah walls that match the trim. My trim POPS now.
It does not even look like the same room.
BEFORE
AFTER
And I even had enough paint left over to do the adjoining mudroom.
I painted these ceilings with some other cream paint I had left over from another project. The light is original to the mudroom.
It just looks so much better!
Cost of flat paint in Texas Leather [paint was on sale that weekend!!!] $20
Then I turned to my backsplash. It was a perfectly fine backsplash, made of the same laminate as the countertops. The only thing I *didn't* like about it was that it ended awkwardly by the stove, and had this weird metal trim around the outer edges. At the home improvement store, I noticed this textured wallpaper [I know what you're thinking...texture. wallpaper. ewwww] But it was a really nice subtle design, said it was made for going over "problem" walls and was paintable. And it was on sale.
So I put it up, covering the area that used to have the laminate backsplash AND the area behind the stove, so that the entire area is cohesive now.
It went up super-easy. And was pre-pasted. So I would soak it, book it, go touch up paint for a bit, and come back and hang my piece. And repeat.
backsplash AFTER
backsplash BEFORE
Oh, and that gross area that was behind the stove? Where someone forgot to finish putting up the new baseboards?
Like a distant bad memory now. I found remnants of the trim in the garage. Seriously. It took less effort/time to install, than to take it out to the garage.
I covered the paper with 2 coats of the semi-gloss paint that I still had leftover from the trim, so if it gets wet or dirty, I don't care...I can just wipe it down. And I had tons of the paper left over.
Textured/Embossed wallpaper [on sale!!!!] $8.00
Total cost of kitchen + mudroom facelift?
$36 and a couple nights of time.
There are still a few things I'd like to change, like the flooring in the mudroom...but for now, I'm still in shock when I go into the kitchen. I hardly recognize it. What took me so long to much such simple and cheap changes?! It's actually one of my favorite places in the house now.
Next up: powder room makeover.
