Kitchen

Kitchen Progress!

- LMN 1 Comment

And the cabinets are DONE!  There’s still a lot of work to do in the kitchen, but the cabinets are done before our movers come which was my goal.

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You can see my crappy paint job around the frame–the walls are going to be painted so I didn’t bother taping around the frames.  Also, check out our gorgeous counters.  The chipped, fake butcher block laminate just makes the kitchen, dontcha think?

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The paint color is Behr’s Poppy Seed, but I used Benjamin Moore Advance paint cuz that’s what all the cool kids use on cabinets nowadays.  I would have tried Behr’s equivalent alkyd enamel, but they apparently don’t sell it in stores and I’ve already touched on my patience issues.  I’m kind of an Advance fan girl now though.  The hardware is all IKEA, spray painted with copper and clear coat.  I swear the handles are all perfectly even, but the doors are a little wonky so all my anal-retentive measuring was apparently for naught.  The cup pull had to be mounted higher than I would like because of how the drawer front attaches, but I may try and mess with it in the future since it bugs me.

Overall I am incredibly happy with the result!  I’m also incredibly happy we didn’t have more cabinets since painting them can be a little tedious.  Still to come: more paint, new faucet, and a counter top solution.  Oh, and lots and lots of stuff since our movers come tomorrow.

Kitchen Dreamin’

- LMN 1 Comment

Matt and I have been heading over to the new house daily.  We don’t fully move for another 2 weeks, but we’re hauling stuff, attacking the lawn, and getting the kitchen prepped…. then coming home, passing out and eating ice cream straight out of the container because it’s not like we’re fit to have company over anyway.

The kitchen is the big project I want to get done before moving because I doubt I’ll be motivated to pull everything out the cabinets once we get it put away.  We’re not doing a ton in the kitchen just yet, but I want to get the cabinets and radiator painted (the cabinets because they’re super boring builder grade things, the radiator because it is frackin brick red). Currently the cabinets have been primed!  Woot!  I have no pictures at this stage, partly because of the exhaustion cycle mentioned above, and partly because there is very little interesting about primed cabinetry.  It looks splotchy and white and that’s about it.

Instead let’s just skip ahead to the fun stuff.  This is my end goal for the kitchen:

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Dark inky-gray cabinets, sleek copper hardware, pale gray walls, Corian Rain Cloud counters (possibly carerra marble since I’ve managed to fall in love with what is apparently the most expensive Corian pattern known to man anyway… but I like the low maintenance that comes with solid surface over stone) and a simple white ceramic tile backsplash.

Right now I’m just tackling paint and hardware. Depending on how long a time frame we’re looking at for replacement I may consider an interim DIY project for the counter and backsplash, but for now I’m just going to leave them as is. The faucet may get replaced sooner rather than later depending on what’s the cause of our low water pressure that’s currently happening in the kitchen. At some point I’d also love to replace the sink.  I’m kind of thinking an apron-front sink, but I really like double bowl sinks and they’re harder to find in an apron-front style.

As I was working on my kitchen design concept, Jenny Komenda of Little Green Notebook posted this beauty and I felt pretty good about where I was heading with our kitchen.