freshly painted kitchen

what a week. i hate hate hated this project, but all that hate was worth it when i saw the result. i feel like we have a new kitchen. and including foam rollers, primer and some cabinet-specific paint called 'advance' i only gave benjamin moore eighty of my hard-earned dollars. not bad!

our petite kitchen was once filled with cherry cabinets - beautiful, solid 'plain & fancy' brand cabinets in a simple, modern style - just not our fav color.

pinterest and houzz.com had me craving a glossy white kitchen, and we figured that could only make the room look larger. so i read all the blogs and took myself to benjamin moore for what is supposedly the best cabinet paint ever - advance. i chose a white called 'chantilly lace' - bright enough to really pop off the wall color ('big bend beige' by benjamin moore.)

a lot of other blogs outline the process in detail, my favorite being young house love. but what surprised me was the 16 hour dry time between coats with this paint. it turns out that 16 hours is a really awkward amount of time, because it's hard to paint more than one coat per day without totally disrupting one's sleep schedule. but i'm hoping that all that extra drying time is just the price i paid for a rock-hard enamel surface that will stand the test of time....

here's the during....

the chaos of cabinet painting

progress

and here's the AFTER!

cabinets 'chantilly lace' by benjamin moore - view from dark gray mudroom

the white cabinets are so much more welcoming than the dark cherry wood - now the kitchen pulls you in from the darker rooms on either side. and i love the ceiling paint - same color as in the screen porch, 'hazel' by sherwin williams.

glossy white cabinets - check.

white cabinets looking spiffy from main room in 'sticks & stones' by sherwin williams

view into mudroom with chartreuse door. bright bright bright!

love how the white cabinetry sets off the granite. we didn't love it before, favoring white countertops as we do...now it looks pretty snazzy!

and since i was excited about phil's new kitchen (b/c even though i'm protective of the paint through its curing period, it is truly his kitchen) i went to home goods for an assortment of cheap drawer organizers and reorganized EVERYTHING...por ejemplo:

utensil drawer - no more mish mash

baking drawer

tupperware - neat and tidy, lids separate

and then that freshly painted bathroom got some love too...i tend to make a mess of my toiletries every morning so i'm hoping that the home goods organizers will be cute enough to make me slow down and put things in their places.

how long do you think this will last? fresh bathroom organization  - tomorrow's gonna be a good day

boom. organized.

next post will either concern the installment of 3 54-gallon rain barrels or the guest room, which is getting fresh wall paint (got a half gallon of  'big bend beige' still to burn after painting the kitchen and master bath) and the dresser is almost done becoming yellow - 'arles' by annie sloan....but for now, delicious scents are wafting out of that beautiful kitchen.  time to see what phil's up to.

bouquets this week