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.

Paint

We have been in our house for nearly 12 years. It was the first house we bought, after spending several years as a military family moving around the world. It was definitely a cosmetic fixer-upper. Dh wanted to rip up nasty old carper, primer ceiling to floor, and move in.

I balked. After all that time in military quarters and rentals I wanted COLOR!! He sprayed primer everywhere, then sprayed the nasty popcorn ceilings. Then my older kids, a few friends and I painted. COLOR! Originally the kitchen, dining room, hall, stairs (all of which open onto each other) and family room were painted the same color. 2 years later I decided to repaint the living room a nice sage green. And I repainted the doors and trim in that period as well.

But for 10 years the open floor plan kitchen/dining/hall/stair stayed the same color. Until 2 months ago when I was washing the stair walls, for the millionth time, and noticed that in several spots I had washed away the paint altogether. Time to repaint!

Only I took another month choosing a color. Which meant several visits to the local home improvement stores, several sample cans of paint, lots of sample boards, one painting of the hall... only to find that the color was much too warm to go with the tile. And lots of input from my adult daughters, who moved home for this past year.

In the end I finally found a color I liked (Olympic's Frosty Pine) and decided not to paint an accent wall. BY the way, I love Behr's new Paint + Primer. It covered well on the first paint color we tried in the hall, and then the new color painted over that covered in 1 coat as well.

On to the kitchen....