Kitchen Reveal

Our dining room and kitchen are connected (makes sense, huh?).  So naturally, I continued the color scheme through both spaces, but with a few tweaks.  I LOOVE the color of baby food peas.  So let's just say I kid-proofed the kitchen by putting that color on our walls so you won't see the pea-smears from little fingers (eww, gross!).  And again, sorry for the messy before shots...

Kitchen, before:

 

 :and after:

 Before:

Before:

After:

Before (hi little kiddos!):

 After (mmm, kiddos are sleeping):

It is like a breath of fresh air!  Ready for details?

First, lets talk about the paint.  Originally, we painted the lower half blue, and I was going to use green as an accent on top, but it was WAAAY too much blue and I felt like I was in a nursing home.  Repainting it green was a 110% improvement.  On top, I had planned on just painting very thin stripes, but once I drew it out on paper, it wasn't going to be enough.  I started doodling some swirls on the stripes and really liked it, so decided to go for it on the walls.  I hand-drew the design with a blue colored pencil, then used watered down paint and a teensy-weensy brush.  This took HOURS, but it was worth every minute!

I have several (well, more than several) favorite spots:

The wall behind the refrigerator was painted green, and I did a swirl 'wallpaper' also in blue:

Next, the coat hooks and bench area.  We come into our house through the kitchen door, so we knew we needed a place to put coats and a few shoes, as well as a place to set the munchkins to put their shoes on.  We use this space to the max!  These hooks have traveled with us through 4 houses now, but before this, they were white!

See how I did that?  Painters tape + seran wrap + black spray paint + spray lacquer.  I think I actually would have preferred them white, but that would've required repainting the mirror and bench, which was out of the question.  We also hung the 2nd coat hook low on purpose so that the kids can hang up their own coats (well, just Christian for now--- and he does hang it up!).

My only dilemma now is possibly hanging anything on the walls.  If I do, do I center it to the wall or to the stripes?  At this point, it seems like adding anything would look silly, but in time I might find something that would work.

Well I love how all this looks in the pictures.  I did a major clean up before taking these, and it makes me giggle to think of the things you can't see just outside the frame of the pictures (like the bottle-drying rack, toy basket, stack of library books, etc).  So I may have to look at these from time to time and do my best to keep clutter at bay.  I'm also kind of excited about the idea of painting patterns, designs, or anything on walls.... my next room makeover will probably fall prey to my obsession.

Don't know if you took notice from the pictures above, but the window got a face-lift as well.  I made my own roman shades, but not in the traditional manner.  Next post: how to make roman shades out of mini-blinds, no sewing required!