Kitchen – before and after

The day we looked at our house was the day I decided the kitchen cabinets needed painting. They were fine oak cabinets, but they were so close to the color of the granite that it all blended into one. To make matters worse, we changed the gross ceramic tile to dark walnut floors and painted the walls taupe – making the entire kitchen a collage of browns.

This fall we got a quote from a painter that was so reasonable, I tried not to allow my jaw to drop to the floor and eyes to bug out of my head. I’ve never been good at having a poker face, but I tried really, really hard while responding that I’d need to talk to my husband to see what was in the budget.

After a long, thought-provoking conversation – – like 5 seconds worth of saying, “really, he said how much?”  Henry completed agreed it was worth outsourcing this project. And of course we decided to do it before the crowd coming at Thanksgiving.

Here is the ONLY picture I can find of my kitchen before the paint job… at least it’s real life around here:

And here is the after:

We added beadboard to the side caps of the cabinets, wrapped it around the the island, and added new pulls to the drawers. We even changed out the arts and crafts light fixture to something more our style.

I’m absolutely in love with this kitchen now. Before it was dark and shadowy but the white cabinets have really lightened things up. And there’s contrast!  No more wall of browns. And I’m so glad to say the paint job is wonderful – and that I didn’t have to do it!