Kitchen Makeover: From Stained Wood(ness) to Bright Goodness

Hello!

I mentioned last week that I have been working on two kitchens at once(!), and am excited to share one of them with you today.  This kitchen is already beautiful to begin with, but when the homeowners were in the process building it, the wife was pregnant with twins and said that she didn’t go with her instinct (which was white cabinets – exactly what she had in their previous house and loved).  I blame pregnancy hormones combined with the stress of building a home at the same time.  After all, hormones are powerful things, right?  I remember bursting into tears when my husband innocently asked me if I was going to wear my maternity overall shorts again (don’t judge, it was a different time, and they were comfortable).

Anyway, I came in to bring her original idea to life and turn the dark wood into something bright and beautiful.  I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Here are some before photos:

I know, some of you are going to say that it’s a travesty to paint the stained wood.  But at the end of the day, it just wasn’t the aesthetic that the homeowners wanted.

You can see right off the bat that we chose a contrasting color for the island – one of my personal favorites – Urbane Bronze (Sherwin Williams), and the perimeter cabinets were painted in Simply White (Benjamin Moore).  We also changed out the cabinet hardware on the drawers, adding pretty satin nickel cup pulls thanks to D. Lawless Hardware.

I love how countertops take on a whole new life when you paint the cabinets.  Never fails.

And no, normally I don’t paint the insides of cabinets.  The exception to that rule is when they’re glass front cabinets.

The Urbane Bronze really pops against the Simply White, and it pulls the shades of gray out of the granite as well.

Simply White is such a great, crisp white for cabinets.  If you’re looking for a “go to” white, this is a great one.

A side by side before and after photo is always fun –

So there you go – another kitchen in the books, with a lot more to come!

If you’re looking to tackle your cabinets yourself, check out my cabinet painting tutorial.

Have a great day!

Jenny