I blame my mother.  She was always remodeling and thinking of new things to do to the houses we lived in…fixer-upers that they were.  Now, I just feel that need to do it with our house.  Once a year I usually redo something, and it has actually been OVER a year, so I am two projects behind.  One is painting the foyer and up to the upstairs hall, and the other is the kitchen.

I want a new kitchen, but unfortunately I want a finished basement more.  That means a kitchen overhaul won’t be for several years.  That means if I want a new look for the kitchen it will have to be low $$ and high labor.  I decided to paint it.  The walls and the cabinets.  Paint is cheap, but it is labor intensive.  While I love the look of wood, I’m not a huge fan of oak.  Our oak cabinets are tired and worn and need some paint love. 

I looked online to see what I could find for painting wood cabinets, and it is a bit more involved than I thought it would be.  I definitely need to take a few days off of work in order to do that, just so the kids aren’t around and getting into the chemicals.  You know on those HGTV shows where they redo a cabinet in a few hours?  I’m going to guess they don’t do everything they are supposed to do and they look like poo a few years later.  Do it right the first time and it will be worth the time you put in.

Plan:
– Take down wallpaper
– Prime and paint the wall – goldenrod/mustard/burnt gold type of color
– Add moulding to the completely useless soffit and paint the moulding red/orange.
– Take off the cabinet doors
– Clean, prime and paint the cabinets
– Put new hardware on the drawers and cabinets (I like this and this…oooh, and this)
– Put a spice rack in one of the drawers (my spices are out of control and I need to organize them.  This may work)
– Reorganize and purge stuff we don’t use
– Celebrate “new” kitchen

To buy:
Deglazer and/or TSP (cleans and deglazes the cabinets)
Primer
Paint
Sandpaper
Drawer and cabinet pulls
Spice drawer insert
Tuscan jars for decorating and storage (Already got some!  See below.)

The color scheme:

 

Wall color:  Mustard.  I would like some texture, but know that once we finally do remodel the kitchen the floorplan will change.  If I do venetian plaster like I want, I may have some issues with the walls not matching up and some places without.  That is not something that you can easily redo, I would think.  I have done lots of faux painting, so maybe I will just do something like that.  I want it to look “aged”.  First order of business is taking off the wallpaper, though.  Yuck.

Upper cabinet color: Buttercream with the inside panel painted blue.  I may need to prime the cabinets first, so that would be at least 3 layers of paint per cabinet.  Yay.

Soffit: Buttercream with moulding on the top and bottom painted the red/orange color.  The intent here is to make the soffit look like it is an extension of the cabinets.

Lower cabinet: Blue.  I may distress it a bit, too.  Still thinking about that.  I’m thinking of maybe priming it, painting it red/orange and then Blue.  After it dries go over the corners and edges with sandpaper to bring out the red.

Accent color: red-orange.  This is a main color in Tuscan design, but we have so many reds in our house already that I don’t want to have too much in this room.

Basically, tuscan-like colors.

Yes, this will take awhile.  I’m thinking of just starting by gradually taking off the wallpaper and then starting on the walls.  Once the walls are done, then I will tackle the cabinets.  I just wish I could replace the counters and put up a tile backsplash, but I don’t want to throw money away on them.  Oh, and replace our ceramic scratched-to-hell-and-stained sink.  It’s truly awful.

Here is the before:

 

Wish me luck!  We host a wine tasting during the summer, so I’m hoping to have my tuscan kitchen done before then.