Our Kitchen Makeover

I'm so excited to share these pictures!  Our kitchen makeover has been one of the biggest transformations in the house- it's amazing what a little paint (or gallons and gallons!) can do to a room!  After painting the cabinets, trim, and walls, the kitchen felt twice as big as it did before, and it feels so much brighter and happier.  Here are the before and afters!

I'm smitten with this new pendant light I found at the Ballard Outlet for a steal!  I originally bought a pretty vintage bulb for it, but it gave off a very yellow light so I instead used a cool-toned Edison bulb. I'm actually glad I switched because this bulb sprays the light on the ceiling in the prettiest way!

Eventually we will update the dishwasher and oven to stainless steel, but as long as these keep working, we're in no hurry!

I found this solid wood dining set on Craigslist for a great deal and refinished it before we moved in.

My favorite, and most-used, part of the kitchen: the coffee bar.  I can't go a day without my morning coffee! 

Not everything is styled perfectly!  Here's a glimpse of real life:  Pepper's container of syringes for his twice daily insulin shots :)  The cubbies are perfect for sorting mail and receipts, and the counter mainly serves as the fur babies' treat area, while also keeping our magazines and coupons organized.  I found the stool at HomeGoods and recovered the top for a fun pop of color!

The final painting job in the kitchen was this copper strip in the backsplash.  Originally, I had planned to pry it out and replace it with something a little more subtle.  But I decided to try painting it first, since that would be way cheaper and easier!  The perfect color ended up being one I already had from painting our fireplace (pictures and tutorial coming soon!).  This color really brought out the browns in our countertop and tied everything together beautifully.

I wanted to get hidden hinges but unfortunately for our style of cabinet door (3/8" inset partial wrap) they don't currently make any.  Also, it is INSANE how many kinds of doors / hinges there are.  I learned way more than I ever cared to about cabinet doors and hinges!

Another part of our kitchen that I'm grateful for everyday is the hall tree.  It's the perfect spot to keep our jackets, shoes, and my purse organized and looking good.

Additional Info:

Cabinet paint:  Cabinet Coat (Home Depot online)

Cabinet hardware:  Target

Wall color:  Sherwin Williams Glimmer

Hall Tree Love

I was recently a guest poster at my sweet friend Heather's blog, but I wanted to post it here, too since this serves as a scrapbook of our life, and now our home!

It's been just over a month since we closed on our house.  This past month was probably the busiest and most exhausting time of my life, but we've made a lot of progress and will finally move in next week!

I have so many projects in mind for our new house, and at the same time, I'm also launching my business here in Atlanta!  My future is filled with painting, organizing, and decorating, and I couldn't be more excited about that!  (I wrote that right before we closed on our house- now, it's 1 month later and I'm laughing at those words- I never want to hold a paint brush again!)  One project I started on before we closed on our house was this hall tree.  I've always dreamt of having a mudroom, and in every house that we went in, I would immediately look for a spot to create one.  So when we walked into our (now) home, I was pretty pumped that there was the perfect place right by the door.

I immediately started my search for the perfect hall tree, but I quickly found that unless you got a custom-built hall tree, they were all pretty much 40" wide.  The wall for our hall tree is 10 feet long so a 40" hall tree would just look silly and tiny on it!  The only wider ones I could find were custom made, either on Etsy or locally, and those were running for about $1,500 - No thank you!

Enter Craigslist.  By some kind of miracle, I somehow scored a custom built, solid wood hall tree, measuring 55" wide (perfect!) for $300.  I was ecstatic, considering most 40" hall trees cost more than $300!  It definitely needed some fresh paint and new hinges and hooks, and I was happy to give it the facelift it needed.  One coat of Zinsser Smart Prime and two coats of Cabinet Coat later, as well as replacing the brass hardware with brushed nickel, and it's looking as good as new!  (I would highly recommend both of those paints- Cabinet Coat is incredible at self-leveling to hide brush strokes.)

Before

And after!

Then came the fun part- styling! 

We Moved to Atlanta! And Bought a House!

I've been MIA around here for months now, but I'm back with some pretty exciting news!  We moved back to Atlanta and just bought our first house!!!

We just closed on Friday and immediately started working on it.  There's a lot of painting in our future! Now that I'll have all of these fun projects to write about, you'll be seeing more of me around here.  

It feels so good to be back home!