Kitchen.. part 3...

I hadn't been thrift shopping or antiquing in at least 3 years when I decided to pop into an antique store next to the yoga studio I go to, after class. It was right about the time I started reimagining the kitchen, just prior to painting.

I kept seeing hand hammered and stamped aluminum trays. I liked a lot of the designs I saw, mostly floral or nature scenes of some sort. But couldn't imagine what I would use them for or where to put them.



While washing the kitchen with TSP, to get it ready to paint, I was scrubbing away at the back splash area under the cabinets, when the idea hit me. Those aluminum trays would make a great back splash! And I could take them down, pop them into the dishwasher and boom! Clean back splash!

The great thing about these trays are that they are easy to find and very affordable. $5 to $15 each. Once I started looking, I had a hard time not buying more than I needed (pack rat alert!).








My adult daughters and I wrangled a bit about placement. I really should listen to my oldest daughter, she is a talented artist, but I ended up wanting MORE and didn't follow her "less is more" sensibilities.


But it is my kitchen, so for now, it stays. You can see the back splash in Kitchen post #2 as well. Please forgive my poor design layout on the blog page, I am still new at this.

Kitchen part 2

So here is how the kitchen came out, the cabinet side of it anyway. The cabinets are the *Autumn Clematis* color. I have room above the cabinets to display some milk glass, jadite, baskets, a few of my teapots... there's a story to tell, but I digress...

Try not to notice the horrendous yellow laminate countertops. I think I might like to try painting them, but, not yet. I barely could keep my grandmother & 4 yr old son out of the kitchen for a week to paint the cabinets!

Kitchen...

After getting into our new house, fixing & painting what absolutely had to, there was no spare cash left for a new kitchen. So we painted the kitchen cabinets. Only we didn't start with nice wood cabinets, something solid, but serviceable. No, we have crapola cabinets. Trim pieces barely screwed on, face frames separating, not even real wood doors.

My attempt at crackle finishing them failed, so I ended up doing a light sponge technique on them. And then a friend painted a little bit of ivy vines across some of the upper cabinets. Only my *helpers* didn't thoroughly wash the cabinets around the stove, and some of the primer + paint peeled in a few places. A household with 6 active kids means the cabinets saw a lot of abuse. Plus at one point my mother lived with us, wheelchairs scrape paint off of cabinets.

I had hoped that perhaps this would be the year of the new cabinets, but it didn't look like that was going to happen. I couldn't bear the look of the old cabinets against the wall paint color, so painting them was on the agenda.

2 coats of BIN primer. And then 2 full coats & 1 light finish coat of True Value's Cabinet, trim & Door paint. I painted them in the same color as the rest of the doors & interior trim. "Autumn Clematis" from Martha Stewarts's original KMart paint line. I have 3 swatch cards I have kept for 10 years and fortunately they have color matched well every time I've used them.