Oh, What a Little Paint Can Do!

Alright... so a coat of primer and three coats of paint (yes, do that math that is 4 coats of paint, ridiculous, is what it is) and moving our painting operation inside (we knew 70 degree Iowa weather in February wouldn't last long) to our tiny spare room, I can finally say after, what? Like three weeks we are FINALLY finished. Well, mostly. So for those of you who are wondering what our kitchen looked like before....

Here are the red walls and dark cabinets in all their glory. We actually painted the walls in the kitchen about a month before we painted the cabinets. We are not haters of red walls or dark cabinets but we are haters of dark colors in small spaces and that is definitely what our kitchen is, small.

This is how we lived for three weeks while the doors were being painted.

One positive aspect is emptying the dishwasher was much easier (don't mind the green painters tape or the dishes sitting on the counter)

But keeping a toddler out of the cabinets was not so easy.
Here is Lauren checking out all the bio-hazards underneath the sink.
Yeah, lets just say she wasn't allowed in the kitchen much.

Cabinets doors back on but without handles

And... whala... done-din-o.

Not sure how I feel about the hardware but it works for now. It is better than not having any handles at all. We kept going back and forth between knobs and handles and finally settled for handles. Ideally this project was to satisfy us until funds are available to completely gut the kitchen and start over. Lets just say that whoever installed the cabinets in the first place wasn't exactly a skilled carpenter. In one picture, you can see how the cabinets are about a half inch from the ceiling and above the refrigerator its flush with the ceiling. This makes some doors slant and off centered which I HATE. But it will have to do for now. I do like how just a little paint brightens up a space. Our kitchen feels much larger and less claustrophobic. We still need to do a few artsy-fartsy things like hang colorful art and get a rug (or two). But until then...