Bizarro Kitchen

Mark and I recently did a bunch of work in our kitchen. We thought we were possibly going to move, and asked a Realtor friend for advice about improvements we'd already considered. She gave us some input about what things should be our priorities and we decided to go for the kitchen. I thought about the "Before" pictures the day we started taking things apart; I was in the middle of babysitting for a friend and making cookies but you know if you don't take the pictures when you think of it they won't ever happen.


We decided to paint the cabinets white. I've always liked white cabinets and before I ever bought a house I thought I'd like white cabinets because of their classic look. However, we had white counters and backsplash and it seemed like it might wash out the room too much. So we decided to wait until we replaced the counters, which probably needed to happen since our previous ones had some damage (like drilled holes). What I was seriously wrong about was how much work it was going to be. We've painted a number of things, but this was just a ton of work. After all, we have a lot of cupboards: 34 doors and 16 drawers. It took probably 4 or 5 times as long as I'd thought. Mark was incredibly supportive of the project in every possible way.

What we ended up doing was buying a sprayer and spraying the cabinet doors. We laid them out in the garage on top of a tarp and sprayed. ( I took a picture of that, but it's on another computer which is currently in PA) It was a whole lot faster, although there was some learning curve with that, too. Since we have little kids and additional responsibilities, most of the work was done late at night. After one particular spraying session and the Day of the Countertops/New Sink & faucet, we waited a day and 1/2 to return to the project. Unfortunately, the cupboard doors stuck to the tarp. It took a lot of scraping and sanding to recover from that. Ultimately, Mark finished the project while I tried to keep the kids out of his way. With the new backsplash, I think our kitchen looks a lot different. We still have lots of touching up and the hardware pulls/knobs to add, but with my ADD tendencies, it may be awhile before I get to that.



And we determined that the new look is very different: a bizarro version of the kitchen we had before. Well, not totally- same basic structure and appliances. But the coloring is different on the surfaces: we had brown cabinets, white backsplash and counters, more brown cabinets, and a brown floor. Now all that is reversed! I told Mark it was like seeing the white version of him, or the black version of me. We had all sorts of fun imagining what the white Mark would look like: would he have red hair? Blond? Pale, freckled skin? And what about me? Would I have an afro or super short hair?

Of course the irony here is the same irony that applies to my insistence to replace carpet with wood floors: the girl who hates to sweep is also the one whose college roommate told me to decorate my kitchen in a "Spatter" theme (since I do enjoy cooking and baking but not so much cleaning). So yeah, white cabinets? Turns out they need a lot of wipedowns. That's okay, I can force myself into cleanliness.