We've got color...

So Saturday and Sunday were very busy days for us in the kitchen. On Saturday Matt finished up some last minute scraping and sanding, while I worked on customizing our cabinets.

To give you a little background IKEA cabinets comes with one of two colors on the interior, white or birch, and we chose birch. However for the exterior of the cabinets you can choose from a wide range of additional colors, our choice was a medium brown. When the cabinets are closed you can slightly see the birch, and Matt found out that some other people had had success in replacing the edges with newly stained veneer. So with a twist of my arm I agreed to try it out, and I couldn't be happier.

Original cabinet:


On the left is the original, middle is after removal, and the right is the unstained veneer I ironed on to each edge.


Then it was on to staining to match our cabinets.


This is a comparison between the new cabinet edge and the front of the cabinets, pretty close right?


This step adds a little time to the cabinets, but in the end it will just create a customized look.

After doing the cabinets, Matt was ready to add some paint to the kitchen. We started by priming the entire kitchen, obviously in white.

(The only paint clothes I have are huge!)

(I'm smiling but it was almost 9pm, and I was getting hungry!)

Matt put in some time after dinner to finish it all up around midnight. Here's our kitchen in all white!

Sunday was more painting. I got up early and began the trim work. Then in the afternoon Matt painted the ceiling. After lunch we took the plunge into some real color. The color choice we went with was Behr Ultra's Oregano Spice. Matt did the cutting in while I did the rolling. We have cabinets going over a majority of the walls, so we didn't paint all the way to the floors, but I tried to cover the rest of the walls just in case.



And the final product looks like this:


To some it might be a little bit overwhelming at first, but there will be cabinets and tile on a majority of the walls, light colored counter tops, and most of the appliances are stainless steel. I think all these things will help keep the color from darkening or over powering the room.

And hey it's just paint, if we decide it doesn't work once everything is installed it will only take a weekend to change.

Alright, well time to hit the hay. It's been a long, yet productive weekend. We should hopefully be laying floors very soon. It is all coming together.