Thursday, September 17, 2015

a cabinet surprise

There is no surface in my kitchen that has remained untouched by paint at this point and the interior of the cabinets were no exception. While they don't show, to the casual passerby, they likely haven't been painted in at least 15 years so they were......grimy. I had put down contact paper when I first moved in but I have tired of the worn this-was-once-white-paint look of them. And when I decided to give them a fresh coat it seemed silly to stick with white, since A. they don't show when the doors are closed, and B. most of the dishes are white so it seemed like a good place for a colorful background. I considered red, purple, blue and even a bright  yellow or coral, but ended up deciding on a dark saturated, jungle-y feeling green. I got a ton of paint strips, narrowed it down to juniper and manor green (Benjamin Moore at my local hardware store of course) and ended up going with manor green as it felt more true green that blue green.
After making the kitchen look like a crazy mess by unloading everything out onto the counters I did a first coat. And paused. It looked so patchy and weird and much more turquoise than I intended. But I decided to keep going and so I did a second coat. And then breathed a sigh of relief because it looked so much better.
Below you can see, on the right one coat, and on the left two and what a difference that second coat made in terms of coverage and color saturation.

I did three coats total, on the top cabinets and the front cabinets too, though I was very much scraping the bottom of my quart can of paint in the end to make sure I got ever last drop. Then it was a matter of waiting overnight and loading everything back in.
I think it's actually easier to see everything with the contrast color background, and I like that the bead board that was always there shows up more with fresh paint. Also this makes me smile every time I need to get something out (and even the more jumbled cabinet to the right that's essentially a pantry looks cleaner and more ordered with this update) so it was totally worth a few hours and a quart of colorful paint.






1 comment:

  1. a complete transformation of your kitchen, job well done

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