Kitchen hutch makeover results

Painting my kitchen hutch was part of my ongoing efforts to update and brighten my dining room and kitchen. 

I'd never painted furniture before and despite my family's reservations and skepticism, I boldly took on this maple cupboard, which I'd inherited from my parents:

  

I wanted to inject some color into the brown-on-brown decor of my kitchen with a painted piece in cottage style.

My goal was to lighten and brighten the space, so I rejected darker colors. I thought antique white would be too bland, and I toyed with the idea of green but couldn't find a shade of green that seemed compatible. I settled on a greenish-grey blue color and chose to layer it over antique white and create a distressed look. The mixed paint and paint chip showed a perfect blue-grey color. However, the result appeared to have a clearer, purer blue tint. While the color wasn't exactly as I envisioned it, I was still really pleased with the results:

 

The photo below shows some of the detail on the antique, distressed look. The idea is to create a piece that looks like it's been painted twice, with the blue paint appearing to wear away to reveal the white paint below and some sections being worn down to the original wood surface. 

My pottery collection includes pieces from Modigliani in Rome, Jerry Beaumont of Beaumont Pottery, family antiques, and pieces picked up in New Mexico and Virginia. Love how they look on the worn white shelves:

I painted using chalk paint, which you can mix up yourself using one of the many recipes on the Internet or purchase from specialty stores. I used a 2-inch sash brush to apply the white first, then the blue. I got the distressed look by using a dry brush painting technique as well as sanding with various grits of sandpaper. The piece is sealed with three coats of clear furniture wax, applied with a brush.

I am considering tinting some paste wax a darker color and applying another coat in order to tone down the blue a bit. However, before I commit to that, I want to live with the current color for a while and see how it does in various types of light through the seasons.

And while you can't notice it in the photos, I also painted the kitchen wall. A BUSY week for me, but a productive one. The freshly painted walls and the robin's egg blue hutch have me ready for spring. 

The project expands

Y'all know how the domino effect goes when you do home improvements. You start on one thing and think, "I really should tackle XYZ while I'm at it."

That's the case with my furniture painting project. Once I decided to paint my kitchen hutch and emptied it and moved it out of the room, I thought, "Hmmm, I ought to paint the wall behind it while I have everything cleared out of this section of the kitchen."

For reasons I don't understand, the former owners used a flat white paint on the kitchen wall. It's near the side door and a high-traffic area. This means I'm frequently wiping smudges and grime off the surface, and the current paint finish isn't good for cleaning. I'm going to paint it the same cottage white color we used in the dining room, with a satin finish.

Yesterday I made a late afternoon run to Home Depot to buy paint and a roller. I also ran out of the paint I'm using on the hutch and need to get some more of that.

Today I was out of the house all day, but I'm almost done with the hutch and the kitchen wall shouldn't take long. I hope to have it all wrapped up by Friday night.

I'll post photos as soon as it's finished!

Dining room and kitchen update: part 2

Last May, I decided I had had enough of the wood on wood color scheme in my dining room, which used to look like this:         

While I liked the cozy, rustic charm of the room, a part of me hated how dark it looked and felt, especially in summer when the trees outside shade the window and the north side of the house gets even less direct light. I wanted to keep the country-vibe but brighten the space and pull it out of the 1970s.

To accomplish that, we painted the paneling cottage white:    

 

Opposite the window wall is the fireplace and on its left is a dark wood built-in. Here it is before we painted the walls white:

After we painted, I wanted the built-in cabinets and shelves to seem less heavy and in better harmony with the rest of the room. I didn't want to whitewash the brick or try to paint dark knotty pine. Instead, I bought a roll of embossed wall paper, highlighted the embossing with just a bit of pale grey paint and then placed it along the back of the shelves. I also gathered all the blue and white pottery I had in my kitchen cabinets and arranged it on the open shelves.

 

 

Hmmm, my photos didn't really capture the embossed pattern of the paper well. Sorry about that.

After I took this picture, I realize how well the pottery colors and patterns match the rug in the room. A happy accident. I bought two of these handmade wool rugs on clearance from LL Bean several years ago, and I absolutely love them. One is in the foyer, one in the dining room. When we painted the paneling and I re-did the shelves, the rug became the piece that anchors the room and pulls all the colors together: antique white, chocolate brown, and cornflower blue.

Just on the other side of the built-in cabinets and shelves is the kitchen, and there's a small cupboard with a hutch against the wall.

It's maple and came from my parents' house. It's probably 45 years old, and I've had it for more than 20 years now. I like this hutch, but my kitchen is a study in brown-on-brown (like the dining room was before we painted it). 

My countertops and backsplash are made of handmade ceramic tiles, created by a local potter when the house was built.The kitchen has a large pass-through and is open to the cottage white dining room. I like the rich color of the cabinets, and I like the variegated browns of the tiles, but together with the faux brick floor, it ventures into the territory of Dark Earthtone Overload.

So in order to inject some visual interest into the space and ease the color transition between the kitchen and the dining area, I'm going to paint my maple hutch. I've gathered my materials and plan to tackle it this week.

Yes, I'm a bit apprehensive. No, I've never painted furniture before. Yes, it's possible I will regret it but Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Most of the time my creative instincts and skills serve me well. We'll see how this turns out. Stay tuned for before and after pictures later this week. 

What to do next?

My restlessness and DIY interests have me spinning around trying to decide what to do next as I seek to stake a claim in this house and in my life, embracing change within and without. I've been spending inordinate amounts of time trolling the aisles at Home Depot and reading an ever expanding vortex of DIY blogs and Web sites.

On my to-do list at the moment:

• painting the interior hallway on our main floor, which for reasons I've never understood, was painted seafoam green by the previous homeowners
• painting our bedroom, which has a dated wallpaper border at the top and a neutral but tired existing paint job
• painting the master bath, which is wallpapered with a not-offensive-but-nevertheless-tiresome ivy-patterned wallpaper.
• rearranging and reorganizing my art studio, which has become cluttered and inefficient. This will involve finding storage solutions on the cheap and balancing my need for easy access to my supplies with a desire for less visual clutter and more horizontal work space.

On my researching and thinking about list:

• ways to update and brighten the kitchen without sacrificing the elements that give it character and set it apart from every suburban kitchen in America
• whitewashing the brick on the enormous fireplace in the basement family room. I think it would enhance the space tremendously.
• replacing light fixtures as our budget allows. Lighting is the weakest link in this house in terms of style and functionality.

On the long-term list:

• renovating the kids bathroom in the basement
• replacing grout and resealing the master bath shower
• redoing the tub/tile in the main bathroom.

Those are projects we're inclined to do once our kids are off to college and out of the house. They are avid cultivators of soap scum, mildew, and grossness. We don't want to renovate a bathroom and watch it slowly lose its gleam due to teenage use and neglect.

What home improvement projects are on your radar? Wish list? 

Before and after

Before

After (though not quite finished, as switch plates need to be added and art hung.)

I was so confident about this project, until the night before, when both kids and my husband expressed their reservations.

"I like it rustic," said my son. "That's what makes our house different from everyone else's."

"Once we paint it, we'll never get the wood back..." said my daughter and husband, a bit wistful.

A bit of doubt crept under my skin that night. Was this really a good idea?

As the paint was going down, I was concerned. It looked whiter than I'd imagined. I thought it would lean closer to a creamy almond color on the wall and have a more distinct yellow undertone, offering a stronger contrast between white trim and the wall. That said, I comforted myself with the knowledge that I'd prefer to go lighter rather than darker than expected.

I was thrilled with how big the room felt with the new paint and how it reflected light into the kitchen and down the stairwell. The room felt fresher and more open and cleaner. I liked how the window now blended into the wall.

Today I'll paint all the outlet and switch covers to match the wall and decide what artwork will be rehung. For the last few weeks, I've been editing my walls--removing and rearranging the framed pieces I have in every room of the house.

It's a small change that makes a big impact. Moving a piece to a different location changes the way you see it and how it interacts with the mood of the room. Retiring pieces that have followed you for years but no longer resonate is also liberating.

I know the black and white photos I have of my teens will be rehung in this room. I'm not sure about the rest. I'm going to live with the blank walls for a while and see how I feel in a week or two.