SheShe, The Home Magician: March 2017

If I say so myself,
this kitchen makeover ROCKS!
I just finished it.
It's another great example of how you can cosmetically upgrade
a space without a major investment!

BEFORE:

Here is Jay's kitchen.

Presently, his cabinets are

a fleshy pickled-finish.

Countertops are black formica,

The layout of the kitchen is a little unusual

in that it has these appliances

that run down the middle of the room.

And behind that,

is the refrigerator and french doors to the deck.

The reverse angle.

Sort of cuts the room right in half!

So I can't really do much about the layout,

but I can surely improve this kitchen!!!

Here's the back of the stove/dishwasher.

Wood isn't even finished here.

On this wall,

there is the trash can,

a freestanding butcher block stand,

and a drop leaf table and chair.

And on the wall,

lots of art hung in a haphazard fashion.....

The floors are terracotta tile.

(Love the doggy foot print there in the middle.)

And here you can really see how the black appliances

stick out from the cabinets.

I've got some ideas to fix that!

THE PLAN:
So...I suggested to Jay...

that I paint the cabinets.

I would do the base ones in a dark tone,

to integrate the black countertops and appliances.

Paint the upper cabinets white.

Change out the hardware.

I explored several wall and base cabinet colors.

I painted swatches all along the wall in various places,

and on the base cabinets.

I knew I wanted to paint the uppers in

White Dove, so I added swatches there, too.

I also suggested doing a stacked stone backsplash

along this wall.

These are the perfect colors to tie in the cabinets,

countertop and floors.

I also wanted to come up with some type of
camouflage to hide all the clutter in the windowed upper cabinets.

Jay stores most of his groceries here.
Dog food packaging is only so attractive...

So after living with these swatches for a few days,
Jay and I selected colors.
I'm going to paint the upper cabinets in BM White Dove.
The base cabinets in Temptation,
and the walls in Revere Pewter.

And now....the REAL work begins.

After numbering/lettering all the doors
(a very important step!)
I removed them.
(I used letters for upper and numbers for base,
since I'm painting two different primer/colors
and didn't want to get confused.)

I removed all the drawer fronts.

I washed down all the cabinet bases and the doors with TSP.
After drying,
I lightly sanded everything and wiped down.

Then I started with priming the base cabinets
with a primer I had matched to the paint.

And the upper cabinets I primed in white.

I do the cabinet bases first,

then put the drawers back in and prime them.

I decided to also do the half door in the same color
as the base cabinets, to keep the flow going.

The present woodwork (you can see in the window here)
has a lot of blue in it...And the walls are yellow....
I'm going to paint the woodwork to match the upper cabinets.
It's going to unify everything and look fantastic with the new wall color.

So after painting the upper cabinets,

I moved to the backsplash.

This product is very 3-D and does not require grout.

Since the tiles are small, the cutting was minimal

and I could do without the need for a wet saw.

It's like a giant jigsaw puzzle.....

I applied the adhesive,

and then put up the tile.

The edges were rather tricky,

and at first,

I was concerned about some of the white adhesive showing.

But I came up with an easy solution.

After wiping off as much of the adhesive as I could,
and allowing to dry overnight,
I used the same dark primer as the base cabinets
to paint over the small areas of adhesive.