Hi! Sorry I have been MIA for a bit. Christmas got a little crazy and then the dreaded January slump happened. It’s too cold to do projects outside and plus, I was just not feeling particularly creative. BUT, now we have some bigger projects in the works around here. While those get underway, I thought I would share the before and after pictures of our kitchen, even if they are pretty old. It was the very first thing we started working on when we bought the house and it made a HUMONGOUS difference. Night and day. Here is where we started (not amazing photography, sorry…):
Dark red, dark wood, black countertops… All in a room that gets roughly one hour of direct sunlight a day. The furniture is the previous owner’s.

Before we even moved our stuff in, we started painting the cabinets. In fact, we started sanding them the night we signed the papers. After I almost burned our brand-new-to-us house down. We’d only had it 4 hours. Pro tip: ALWAYS wait for the first fake log to burn out before adding a second. Anyway, I am not going to go through a full cabinet painting tutorial here because there are some great ones out there and frankly, it was super boring. Super. Boring.

So after days of sanding, priming, painting and a blessing in the form of Sam’s parents showing up and his dad finishing most of my part of the paint on the cabinets, we were in a much better place.

I added these pretty Anthro streamline pulls for the cabinets and sprayed the old knobs with Rustoleum’s oil rubbed bronze spray paint for the drawers. There are nine weirdly tiny drawers, so that saved a good chunk of the hardware budget to use elsewhere.

The next big upgrades came when my family came to visit and we painted the walls Benjamin Moore’s Spring Valley.  Why yes, it did take my mom, dad and I the entire day to pick a color. Thank heavens Sam liked it. I think he also liked that he wasn’t around for a day of paint swatching.

While my fam was visiting, my dad and Sam built a radiator cover to conceal the wonky radiator, which made a huge difference.

I painted it and added the screen… gotta love that copper spray paint. The front panel pulls out so we can access the radiator, but the shelf is fixed.

Finally, Sam’s dad and uncle helped (ok mostly did it for us) build shelves in the corner above the radiator.

After a lot of work and paint we have a completely different and MUCH brighter kitchen.

So there you have it. This is our “stage one” kitchen makeover. We are now getting the ball rolling on an actual kitchen renovation, and I will share those details at some point soon. All I have to say is, how much better would it be if the windows WENT TO THE OUTSIDE instead of the laundry room?

Also, it is painfully clear to me now that the brick wall needs art. That photo landed there on a preexisting nail the day we moved in, and there it still hangs.

I hope you enjoyed the change!

XO,

Julia

P.S. – To friends/brother-in-law whose 2015 weddings we have been invited to, please be assured the save the dates usually occupy a place of honor on the fridge, but I didn’t think the 9 people who might see this ALL needed to know the deets.