The Power of Paint. Updating my Kitchen!

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful summer.  The heat is in full swing here, so I finally had a moment to sit down and blog.  I have been working tirelessly painting my kitchen cabinets.  For any of you who have done the same, you know it’s a slooooww process. 

But I am ALMOST done.  ALMOST……..

There is really no stopping point for the wood work in my kitchen.  Making it difficult to use anything other than one color.  So I compromised.

Although I wanted this entire side of the kitchen in grey, I ended up only painting the cabinet doors on the top so that the white would flow through the entire kitchen.

The grey is Seattle Mist by CeCe Caldwell.  The white is Anne Sloan old white.  Which gave me the perfect opportunity to test BOTH of these products and compare them.  I have to say that the A.S. chalk paint wins hands down over the CeCe Caldwell.  It isn’t as runny and goes on much smoother and gives a much nicer finish.  Because I was painting so many cabinets, there was no way that I was going to wax over everything.  Instead I choose the polyacrylic satin finish top coat that we use on all of our furniture.  We have used it many times on the A.S. chalk paint with consistently great results.  Not so with the CeCe Caldwell.  When I clear coated over this product, I was left with dark streaks and  darker patches.  Thank GOODNESS I only painted this small bank of cabinets because I was about ready to pull my hair out.  In the end, I had to prime over each door and start completely over.  Although this still did not leave me with a perfect finish, it’s much nicer and I’m leaving well enough alone!  I do love love this color though.

 

I left my wallpaper faux finished back splash.  Even my old counter tops look nicer with the new paint!  Darn it!  I soooo want to replace them.  I love my little lamp that I found at The Rink.  It had a hunter green shade with little apples.  YUK.  I replaced it with this simple linen shade from Target.

The black knobs are from Hobby Lobby.  Do you like my little fruit crate?  I think it looks pretty cute in my cabinet.

Part of the other side of the kitchen.  I made myself a few cute kitchen towels for a splash of color.

I freshened up some hardware that I already had with black spray paint.

And finally installed a couple of hooks for my aprons.  Instead of hanging them from nails. 

Heather told me about this cute rug from Lowes.  I have to say though, that I am a little disappointed in the way it washed.  One of the edges is already unraveling.

I am definitely loving the way my kitchen is shaping up!  And I LOVE A.S. chalk paint.  I does everything I had heard it does and more. 

Next, I have to choose a paint color for the walls.  Surely I can find something out of the bazillion samples I have taped to the wall. 

Hope you are having a wonderful week!

Denise