In all honesty, I buy a lot of paint. Our basement is full of tester pots, quarts, whole gallons, some with a lot of paint, some kept just for good ‘keeping’. It’s no secret that I love to change my walls, and often. I finesse the detail until the colour I choose has just the right shade and tint to make my eye happy. I do all the painting myself, and have always done so, so for me the notion of repainting doesn’t come with a big bill! And that makes it easy for me to change the look of a room.
Our kitchen is an interesting little space. It’s long and lean, but it’s been designed a u-shape kitchen with seating on one side, which you see from the pics. It’s very traditional, with red oak floors run on the angle and maple cabinet doors with a heavy profile and warm brown stain. There a lot of other details that speak to the previous owner’s trad ways…angled cabinets, glass front corner cabinets, and cream travertine backsplash laid on an angle. It’s not for us, but it’s a perfectly lovely kitchen. So the only way to update it is to paint!
We are fortunate to have a ton of light in here…one big skylight and one large nearly floor to ceiling window in the front. There is also a large window over the sink. The kitchen is bright, so it can take a darker colour if we had wanted. Problem is that the natural light heavily distorts the pigment of the colour. Also, we look out onto salmon coloured stucco from an adjoining room, so this had to be taken into consideration. The wall colour would have to read as warm…brownish or reddish…rather than cool, with undertones of blue.
All things considered, the task in here was to marry our love of a more modern aesthetic with a very traditional kitchen. My initial thought was to use a light colour on the wall to detract from the cabinet and bossy granite…
Para Paint Pina Colada
The problem here was that it was too light, and didn’t marry the other side of the kitchen well. The room seemed disjointed, with two definitive spaces, and our want was to have one clear room. In addition, much as I love orange, painting the inside of the skylight orange made the kitchen glow. All over. Not good!
Here is what I just finished doing…
I used Benjamin Moore Old Soul…a brown based grey that is warm (which picks up the colour of both the floor and the cabinets), and acts as a much more interesting backdrop for both the pendant light and the gallery wall. The room seems a little heavier, reads as more uniformed, and actually looks more contemporary than the first choice.
A small and inexpensive change. One gallon of paint and a few hours. And a whole lot better if I do say so myself.
Make it Your Own and You Make it Your Home.
Categories: Decorating, DIY
Stylish Life & Home 
My respects, in my opinion, you have done an excellent kitchen.
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Many thanks, it’s been a lot of work!
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