I'm super thrilled to report that the new paint color, London Fog, is up on the walls in our kitchen! I can't say it was a planned weekend project...but we made a serious dent in the painting on Sunday (after I had written the post about selecting the new paint color). After a mere eight hours and two coats, we're the proud new owners of an improved kitchen (color). But before the "big reveal," let's take a look back at what our kitchen looked like when we bought our house.
Blech. It looked like a 1980s man cave in the woods. Therefore one of our first major projects after buying the house was to complete a quick and inexpensive makeover using the same appliances, counters, and cabinets since that's what our budget would allow. Here's what we've been living with the past seven or so years.
Because our kitchen and sun porch are largely one space (after we removed the wall when we found massive termite damage), changes to one room mean changes to both. Here's a look in the other direction from the kitchen into the sun porch so you can get a better feel for the space.
If you're a loyal Old Town Home reader, you might remember that earlier this year I vowed, as one of my new year's resolutions, to give the sun porch area a makeover. When I introduced new bamboo blinds and a wool rug scored on clearance from Home Goods a few months back, I was sorely disappointed with the results.
As much as I was hoping to avoid painting the two rooms, the longer I lived with the space the more apparent the decision became. So this weekend I declared enough was enough, and with a little help from Lulu, chose Benjamin Moore's London Fog as the new color for the space.
Though we had several other items on the "weekend work" docket, and none of them involved painting the kitchen, after Alex picked up a gallon of the paint we chose I was like a kid on Christmas morning. Just moments after waking up bright and early on Sunday, I had cracked open that fresh gallon of paint and got to work. In fact, Alex was still sound asleep and I was so excited to tackle the project I may have neglected to change out of my pajamas, let alone shower. Whoever said bed head is sexy clearly hasn't seen me first thing in the morning. Gross.
The work was slow going, as we needed to do some repair to the walls where we've had a few nail pops develop over the years, as well as a small crack. While I cut in, Alex took care of the repairs.
He mixed up some of his 20 minute setting type joint compound, and spread it over the various cracks and nail pops that we noticed. Alex blames all of these on last year's earthquake, but I'm pretty sure they were around before that day. After allowing the joint compound to dry, he sanded all of the patches smooth and gave us a nice surface to work with.
We also took the opportunity to clean some hard to reach spots, including the area under the white hutch in our kitchen. What we discovered under there made my stomach churn. Little did we know, we were housing a dead worm farm.
Speaking of cleaning, we decided to wash all the light switch and outlet covers, ceramic pumpkins that sit on top of the white hutch, and the teapots and plates that sit on top of our cabinets. It was time consuming, and not a task we do often enough.
It was quickly obvious that we wouldn't be able to get by with just one coat (although I can't think of a time throughout our nine years of renovation projects when one coat has done it). So we resolved to put our efforts into completing the two coat paint job in just the kitchen to minimize the mess and clutter from displacing all our counter top appliances, accessories, and artwork, and leave the sun porch for another day.
Luckily Alex has longer arms than I do, and was able to get into some of the harder to reach spots like cutting in along the ceiling. As much as I loved the "Traditional Yellow" for many years, I was happy to see it slowly disappearing.
It was a long day for sure, but I'm so happy to say I'm thrilled with the results. The new color looks nice against our counter tops (here are the details on how we made them over with a few cans of spray paint), overall has a much more modern feel, and I think it will look much better with the new rug in the sun porch.
Once the kitchen was nearly put back together, in true impatient Wendy fashion, I might have started doing a little painting in the sun porch as well. I didn't get far before I ran out of daylight and steam, but we're well on our way to having a clean, fresh coat of paint throughout these two rooms.
Of course now I can't help but think how much better our kitchen would look with a white subway backsplash and butcher block countertops. But given that we have plans to flip flop the current kitchen/sun porch and family room in a couple years when we do our "real" renovation of the space, it's hard to justify spending that money now for yet another "temporary" fix. (Or is it?)
So what do you think? Are you team "Traditional Yellow" or team "London Fog"? Do you think we're headed in the right direction to updating this area of our house? We've had the yellow for a long time, and we were ready for a change.
