It’s The Little Things: A Kitchen Tale
Posted By jayna on September 22, 2011
When the husband and I walked through this Little Blue House the first time, we kept exclaiming over all the little things that just felt so nice. Things that made the house feel like a home and let us imagine ourselves living within its cozy little walls. Things like the beautiful white mantle over the fireplace, and the molding throughout all the first floor. The kitchen initially made us fall in love, with the slate floors, brand new appliances and really expensive cabinets.
After we moved in, and finally got past that honeymoon period, the few glaring flaws started becoming more and more annoying. The counter tops are granite tile, but are done very poorly and are uneven. The sink is large and functions great, but is scratched and outfitted with the oddest faucet ever. The ridiculously expensive cabinets are wonderful, but we both prefer white and the color is slowly bugging the crap out of us.
But . . . all of those things are either incredibly time consuming or incredibly expensive to fix. Neither of which have any place in the “making it a home” timeline right now.
The one huge and glaring flaw that we could, indeed, change right now was incredibly easy.
The wall behind the main section of the counter was a super gorgeous kind of paneling that is molded to look like bricks and just happened to be adorned with a floral pattern. Super, super classy and screaming of the 80s.
It works so well with the crazy granite counters and the tile back splash. And floral patterns fit so well in the rest of our decorating in the house.
Thanks to the uber-organizational tendencies of the previous owners, we were able to look in the stack of paint cans in the hall closet and pull out the exact color that was in the rest of the kitchen.
Seriously. Stacks of cans, labeled precisely, for each room of the house and every spot of trim. To go along with the repair kits for the wood floors, names of all the grout in the house, siding on the outside and every manual for every thing that runs. In-sane.
A quick coat of primer and a quick coat of paint and we now have a uniformly colored kitchen. Ten times easier than replacing the paneling, and so much easier on the eyes.
Now, we just have a big empty spot to fill . . .
It looks fantastic!
Looks so much better! I really like it.
We have a garage full of paint too, unfortunately they are not labeled. This is why the fireplace I painted turned out to not be the same off white as the trim. oh well, close enough :)
Floral patterned bricks scare me. It looks so much better now!!