My Ever Changing Kitchen: Retro Green Kitchen Cabinets

I finally made some progress this past week 

on a project of my own! 

For a change….

You know things around my pad 

are always the last to get done.

But with all the snow and wintertime blues of late, 

business is rather slow.

So it was a good time to finally tackle 

another chunk in the continually changing 

SheShe kitchen redo..

The beginning:

When I bought my little house back in 1987, 

the kitchen looked like this:

Yikes! It's hard for me to even look at it!!

Those honey oak cabinets…white formica counter…..

such limited storage that I added cabinets and shelves

all over the place.

 Almond colored appliances….

not enough counter space.

I HATED it…..

 So back in my high rolling days of producing,

I designed a new kitchen and had it renovated…

so it looked like this.

I knocked out the pantry and replaced it with a built-in fridge, 

reconfigured cabinets along the back base wall 

with open shelving above.

I had beadboard and extended counters of recycled douglas fir installed.

I did all the painting myself.

It was my very first cabinet redo project 

and I used an off white distressed finish 

with stain and glaze overlays.

I loved my kitchen!!! For awhile…..

And then last year, 

I decided to "funk it up" a bit.

I painted the bead board behind the top two open shelves.

I displayed all my turquoise and cut glassware on the top shelf,

and all my white dishes below.

 I started painting the upper cabinets white with no distressing.

A cleaner look.

And for the bottom cabinets, well, hmmmm.

I couldn't decide on a color.

I tried many……...

 Here you can see that I have about eight colors on the various bottom cabinets,

plus I had brought in this old radio cabinet for an island.

 And I got stuck.  

And since then, 

I've had this patchwork kitchen….

 But FINALLY, I decided I wanted to do the base cabinets in a retro green.

So I headed to Lowes and selected 

what I thought was the perfect color: 

Enchanted Green.

 NOT!! 

What I really wanted was more the color of the crock on the countertop in this photo.

See how far off I am?

The color has more turquoise than I thought.

Even Wilma is sort of freaked out by the palette.

I know I am...

 Here's the other section, under the sink.

I also changed out the hardware to these great 

vintage style cup pulls and green glass knobs.

These are staying! I love them.

And I painted the island to match the cabinets.

At least I can hate everything in unity.

But wait, it's not over.

I decided to experiment with adding some stains,

to see if I could brown down that turquoise...

So I did the island first.

It worked!

See the difference on the paint chip?

Above: Paint Color

Below: With stain added.

So I added stain to all the cabinets.
I used a combo of Colonial Maple and Special Walnut.

See the difference?

Now the color reads green.

And goes nicely with that emerald green sink,

the only thing I kept from the original kitchen.

See how much closer the cabinet color is to the crock now?

Next up, the upper cabinets…..

I wonder how many years that will take.

But some progress has been made.

And I'm rather happy about that!