First kitchen project!

Hello and happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day my friends! First of all, I have to say WHOA – I did not expect that response to Friday’s post! I loved reading all of your thoughts! I read every single one and if you left a link to your blog, I will be by…it just may take me awhile. ;)

I think it’s lovely that so many of you are invested in blogs and feel a connection because I do as well. I think I can speak for most bloggers when I say that it’s very important to us. I don’t ever want you to feel obligated to comment here – I know it takes time. But if you want to I love it! :) I feel like that’s how I get to know you.

Anyway, today’s project is a quick one – oh how I wish it was quick to complete! Actually it isn’t done just yet but I’m so happy with the progess I had to share. I think it goes to show what a difference simple changes can make!

I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue the board and batten that we have in the family room into the rest of the kitchen:

We don’t really have much wall space in there anyway so I wasn’t sure it would be needed. But then I realized it looked a little odd just having a few tiny walls without it…so this project was started.

The bay window and the pantry wall is what I’m talking about today:

(To see more about that glass pantry door, go here. To see how I made the glass more private for cheap, go here.)

Sorry for the bad iPhone pics – I didn’t realize how bad they looked till I got them on here. There were a few things I wanted to do in this area – the old baseboards had stain all over them (that would normally be covered by quarter round) but I’ve been redoing the base in here anyway. That wall was still the old wall color – a Ralph Lauren color called Sisal that I had mixed at Home Depot nearly 11 year ago.

And finally, I wanted to redo the door trim to match the craftsman look on the rest of the main floor – this was the last door to tackle, whoot!! I still have most of the doors upstairs but I call that progress!

So the first step was to remove the baseboards around the door – which I’ve told you is a total pain in the butt. One, because our base was installed incredibly well and it’s hard to remove anyway, but two, because we were lazy (see one) and didn’t take the base off before we had the hardwoods installed years ago. It’s hard to get down under there to get it out. But I got it done, then took the old trim off:

I explained that process and how I do the craftsman trim in more detail in this post.

Next up, I measured how high the board and batten would go and then painted the semi gloss white up to that point. Three coats later and it was ready to go!:

If you remember this is a no spend month for me – the door trim was sitting in the garage. I got it a couple months back to do the trim around our bedroom window, but I realized after the fact that it wouldn’t be worth it on there. With the roman shades hung high and the drapes on the sides, you wouldn’t see it anyway. SO…some of that trim got used here.

I started the upper part of the board and batten look with some scrap I had leftover from the family room. So far I’m THRILLED with how it looks:

So much prettier, right? Gah, I will never tire of the power of white trim.

So here’s the thing – you don’t even have to do the whole board and batten look to get a big impact like this. Just the white walls and the trim along the top makes a big statement, right?

I still have a lot to do that I hope to get done this week. The baseboards still need to go in – but I will probably stop at the bay window since eventually there will be a window seat there. Maybe I will just continue it so it looks nice for the time being. I did start painting the trim on the bay windows:

Only one coat on one window though – only eight more coats left (on all the windows). And the lower part of the walls need two more coats of white in the bay window as well.

It will take forever but I can already tell it’s going to look so good!:

In a couple weeks I’ll get a bit more trim to add the board and batten look to these walls too. I don’t think I’ll do many vertical pieces though -- at least not as many as the rest of the room. The walls are too small and I don’t want it to get too busy.

And of course, I need to hang my fork and spoon back up! I get asked about those a lot – I found them at a thrift store years and years ago. They were black and I sprayed them a silver color.

Because I love before and afters (they show me how far it’s come) here’s what we had yesterday morning:   

And here’s what we have this morning!:

Lots left to do but I’m so excited to get this whole area finished up after months of in between!

Doesn’t the white paint and trim look so fresh? Love it! The painting takes forever but it’s a cheap job for sure – and it makes such a difference! Now I cannot wait to get that window seat started! :)