One of my dearest friends Holly Cochrane and her husband Jamie recently bought an awesome house. She has spent her hard-earned summer off renovating her kitchen. I have anxiously awaited updates throughout her process, in awe of her ability to do this single-handedly, and was so excited to see her finished result! Read below for her beautiful airy transformation. I can't wait to visit! -Laurie
I awoke one February morning with an idea in my head. “This
summer, I am going to update the kitchen”, I declared to my husband. He said
okay, knowing full well that we were going to have a mess on our hands until
the beloved day my new idea came into fruition.
We love our home. If you know me at all, you know that for
various reasons the concept of home is crucially important to who I am. With
that being said, we purchased our home knowing that I did not care deeply for
the kitchen or bathrooms. Before you get too excited, the bathrooms still look
as they did the day we signed our life away. I don’t do plumbing.
I enjoy working with my hands, though. I have this DIY
nature that screams, “I’m not paying someone to do that!” The truth is, I
didn’t do it all myself. I picked out a shiny counter and had it professionally
installed. WE LOVE IT! You see, on one counter we had an icky old laminate. On
the other, grimy mosaic tiles in an icky shade of green, much the same as the
shutters and front door. Hunter green is an atrocity in my book and will not be
tolerated.
I made mistakes along the way, had to do and re-do, and
spent most of my hard-earned summer on our dear old kitchen. We kept the same
appliances, because well, this is NOT HGTV (but everything else has been
changed). Here is a before and after of my little slice of Heaven:
In Between:
After:
So quickly, I am going to tell you what I did and what I
used.
Cabinets:
We kept our old cabinets and added lattice molding to the
fronts. We also replaced the doorknobs and pulls. I always use Valspar from
Lowes, which is nice because they have a great kitchen and bath line. The upper
cabinets were painted Valspar’s “Woodlawn Bedroom White”. The lower cabinets
were painted Valspar’s “Woodlawn Colonial Gray”, and the walls were painted
Valspar’s “Aspen Gray”.
Trim and Molding:
I had to add quarter-round to the baseboards in the kitchen
because they were missing. (Seriously? Come on, previous owners!) I also had to
paint all trim and baseboards (including two sets of French doors) because
unlike the rest of the house, which is white, they painted the kitchen trim
cream (ick). I was also going to add crown molding to the tops of the cabinets,
but ultimately gave that dream up. The corners and I cite creative differences
for the cause of this minor failure. I painted all of it with a high gloss
bright white.Backsplash:
Remember what the backsplash looked like mid-removal in the
“In Between” photos? What a nightmare!
The good news is that it no longer looks like that! Whew. It
was a doozy, but I used Fasade’s paintable “tin-like” paneling. Loved the
stuff. It was easy to cut and I think it looks great. I painted it with
Valspar’s “Statuesque”.
Accessories:
Most of the small pieces of the puzzle are a mixture of
ideas from Pinterest. I’ll just give you the pictorial representation.
I can’t believe it is finished. Honestly, I am not even
certain what to do with myself! While finishing this project is entirely
satisfying, I do have some people to thank: Jamie, my Mom and Jamie’s Mom. This
would not have been a possibility without these three. This minor highlight of
this roller coaster skips most of the downs and almost all of the creative problem
solving. My kitchen no longer embarrasses me and we are pleased with its look.
It makes the work completely worth it. What a journey.
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