kitchen reveal

Well, I finally did it.  I have wanted to do something different with the cabinets since we moved in.  The thing that was stopping me was Mr. Jones and his fixation on covering perfectly fine wood with paint.  I know I used to strip furniture and wondered why someone would paint over perfectly beautiful wood.  It wasn't necessarily the wood that bothered me so much but the scale of the cabinets in this kitchen.  The ceilings are 10 feet tall and the cabinets did not seem to match the scale of this room.  In order to do what I needed to do I needed to paint or try and do a different stain color. (because the color of the stain was not quite what I wanted either.)

I found a Rustoleum kitchen cabinet transformation kit and decided that maybe that would work.  On the picture on the box of the kit it showed several different options to glaze to get  a certain color.  In the beginning that was what I was planning on doing. Glazing the cabinets.

This is the pantry by the fridge.

I chose the Rustoleum kit because it said you didn't need to sand and I really wasn't in the mood to sand so I bought the kit.  The first step is removing the hardware and the hinges and doors form the cabinets.  This is tedious, I won't lie but it is so worth getting a good finish on your cabinets.  The next step was using a deglosser, scrubbing the doors and the cabinets and then rinsing them with clean water and drying them.  The next step is the bonding coat.  It said to use 2 coats so if you are doing both sides of the cabinet doors then you will put 2 coats on each side.  I recommend this because it just looks better.  I don't usually do the inside of the cabinets, I use the green frog tape and tape everything off that you don't want painted. (this takes a while too but makes the job so much easier.)

I decided to paint a section at a time instead of doing all of the cabinets at once.  The reason for this was because I didn't have enough tables inside to put all of the cabinet fronts on. When I have painted my other kitchen cabinets, the weather is a little warmer and I set up tables in the garage.  This time of year it is cold and I wanted them to dry before next year.

Believe it or not this is the fourth kitchen that I have painted in the homes we have lived in.  All of the kitchens have had oak cabinets and I have painted them some form of white. This was the last one I painted in the Cub river home.

I want you to remember this picture because of the window. Sorry I didn't get a picture of the whole window.  But below is what the window looked like in December.

This is after 2 coats of the bond coat, you can see the green tape on the floor.  After this bond coat you then apply the glaze but when I glazed the wood, I kind of had a melt down because it was not what I wanted at all and it just made the cabinets look muddy and dirty. Yes, the grain of the wood showed through but it made the cabinets look very old. (sorry I didn't take a picture of this part.) After some discussion I decided to go with what I wanted all a long, another white kitchen but not with the bright white cabinets.  I made a trip to Ace and found some Valspar paint with the perfect light gray.  The man at the paint counter was so nice and mixed the perfect color.  It actually was a Benjamin Moore paint color and it was the perfect gray but I wanted it lighter than on the swatch so he only put 50% of the color in and in was perfect.

I went home and started painting over the glaze.

Okay this is the part that I think totally makes the kitchen look like what I wanted.  Mr. Jones is amazing and I told him I wanted a wide crown molding on the top of the cabinets.  I got the idea from Pinterest.  Here is my inspiration.http://theletteredcottage.net/guest-post-by-mr-lettered-cottage/

So Mr. Jones helped me find  the crown molding and built this on top of the cabinet.  We didn't do it exactly like the  Pinterest idea. ( he did it better! He used a brad nailer and didn't have to worry about glue and tape and it looks fantastic!) As you notice in these picture, I don't take every thing out of my cabinets.  I wasn't painting the inside so I just left everything in.  After doing each section of the kitchen I then painted a top sealer coat to the painted cabinets.  In all I did 4 coats of paint and one coat of the sealer. (That's a lot of flipping the cabinet doors over to paint. Remember to always end with the cabinets face up for your last coat of the day.)

After a week of living in disarray I finally was able to put the hardware back on and Mr. Jones is a perfectionist at putting the hinges back on the doors.

Here it is!!

I love it! and if you notice, I had another inspiration, (I think Mr. Jones is hating my inspirations.) The window above the sink just looked so plain and needed some molding love.

so Mr. Jones made the molding around the window and it was the perfect finish.!

Doesn't the cabinets look in proportion to the room now.

He made the moldings to go above the pantry as well.

and above the open shelving.

Here is a close up of the window molding.

yes, the window looks grand like the rest of the room.

looking the opposite way.

I am loving the wood tile floors and for Christmas I used my Christmas money to get these wire light covers for the lights above the table.  I added the Edison bulbs and I love the look.

one more time. AAAAAH!

and the window

Okay I have promised Mr. Jones I will stop thinking up projects for awhile.

But, I am loving this last project!!

My Holiday home tour

Welcome to our home, I'm starting in the kitchen because that is the way most people come into our home.  That's okay with us because friends always use the back door :) We have been working on the tile in the kitchen for months and the tile is finally finished.  I chose this walnut tile because I loved the color and it really made the granite look so much better.  I'm debating on what I should do with the cabinets and if you look close you can see some paint swatches on the side of the cabinet.

I love my kitchen though because there is enough room for several cooks, and the cooks in my family make really yummy food!

When we get together everyone works on their "yummy" dish and the food is really good.

( I just noticed that I spotted one of Ryan's secret hiding spots for his almond chocolate bars, can you see them hiding on top of the cabinet?)

You can see why it has taken us so long to finish the tile, we replaced this area with tile and pulled up the carpet.  So, now there is lots of tile in here.

Having it all in the same flooring has made it nice to clean and now I can see all of the dirt, instead of it hiding in the carpet.

We decided to have a real tree this year, Mel thinks it looks like a "Charlie Brown tree, but it was great to decorate, because I had room for those large ornaments to hang.

I was glad we placed it on this side of the room because of my "vertically challenged body" I was able to reach through the top railing and decorate the top of the tree. We replaced the carpeting in here as well and I love how this stain proof carpet cleans up!

It's funny when you look close at the pictures you took and you spot things that you don't notice everyday.  This arrangement on this low table has been rearranged several times, (because I have a little 18 month old that loves to check everything out.)

We found these topiaries in Washington and they love all of the light they get here on the piano.

If you look close at the Christmas tree you can see that all of the ornaments are above the reach of an 18 month old :)

This arrangement used to be on the low table in front of the couch, but we got tired of finding the glass ornaments everywhere, and he broke a few so we didn't want him to get cut! So it's up higher now, out of his reach.

This is in the front entry.

and more of the front entry.

I should have started at the front door but we are all friends so we started at the back door.  But if you formally came to my house this is the door you would come to.

Hmm, I can see me in the window. Can you see the view we see out the front of our house in the reflection in the window?

There I am again

This is in the front entry too, I have a big room in my entry.

more of the piano 

This is really an outdoor tree but I decided to leave it inside because I was afraid it would blow off the side of the mountain and end up down below with any kind of wind.  So, I left it inside.

I'm glad that I did because it gave me a place for all  of my snow globes that we made a couple of years ago.

And because it is up on a table they have been safe from little hands.

Just a shot of the master bedroom and the holiday pillows.

Another view of the down stairs.

I finally had Ryan mount the doors on the wall and I like them so much, they look like works of art to me. ( I love old doors.)

Hope your holiday season is fun filled and family filled with lots of joy and happiness. Thanks for stopping by!