painting the kitchen

If money was no object, there are several things I'd like to change about our kitchen. Unfortunately, it is, so we're forced to prioritize and be patient as we slowly make changes to match our personal preferences. The kitchen is totally functional and we enjoy the time we spend in it together. That being said, there are some changes we'd like to make. My main beef with the kitchen is how dark it feels. It gets great natural light, but that a lot of that is washed out by the dark wood. Painting the kitchen was the second "project" we started, after we painted our tv room and added a small built-in entertainment center. It has been a long process, but we've finally completed the painting.

BEFORE:

The best "before" picture I could find is this picture from December 2011 when Anthony's parents and brother were visiting over New Year's.

In August of 2012 we began phase one of the kitchen update (painting) by painting the wood paneling, trim and windows white.

Next up I painted the walls Behr Mineral while TJ was traveling in June 2013. It's a nice "greige" (mix of gray and beige) that further brightened up the room. The original color was more of a peachy tan.

FINALLY, this past weekend I painted our last window. We taped it back when we painted the rest of the trim, but kept putting it off because we struggled to remove the blinds. They are attached with what appears to be an indestructible force. We painted around it and you can only tell if you lean way over the sink and look up. It's not perfect, but it looks so much better! Because we left tape up on the windows for over a year and a half(!) it took a lot of goo gone, elbow grease and a razor to get it clean.

 Clean windows for the first time since 2012.

AFTER:

I am only posting pictures of the half of the kitchen we've changed. There are still a lot of things we'd like to do, but in the meantime it feels so much brighter.