The Kitchen Tour

If you follow me on my Facebook page, you might remember 4 months ago, we moved into our new house.  I had written an update on my page about how we had hired a painter and the painter had thought I was crazy for wanting to paint my kitchen ceiling dark.  However, after it was done, he was blown away by how great it looked.  You should never doubt a woman with a plan!  

I've since had readers ask for pictures of the kitchen.  It's a tricky room to photograph, so I've shied away from taking pictures in there.  However, today I figured it was clean and no time like the present.  The pictures aren't as great as I'd like them to be, but I think you'll get the idea and feel of the room.

Here are some pictures from the real estate listing on our house.  I didn't take a lot of before pictures, so these work out perfect.

You can see in these pictures, the walls are painted an olive green.  I liked the color fine, but it wasn't the look I was going for.  The room is huge and with the ceilings being vaulted with skylights the white felt very cold.

Funny, but true, we did not buy this house because of the kitchen.  The kitchen is fantastic, but I'm not a huge cook.  Whoever designed this kitchen clearly was a gourmet cook.  The appliances are top notch and there are 3 options for dishwashers.  It's an entertainers kitchen for sure and it did help us want to buy the house, but the yard and neighborhood was what sold us on this one.

 In this picture you can see the lights.  I wasn't a huge fan of the lights in this kitchen either.  Again, nothing wrong with them, but not the look I'm going for.

Also, you can see above the slider the color switches to yellow.  So in the room there was white, yellow and olive green.  I decided to keep the yellow because it's a good shade of yellow and there's a lot of square footage that had been recently repainted in this color.  I was trying to save some money and not repaint everything!

The look I was going for in the kitchen was modern, vintage, industrial.  I don't know if that style actually exists, but this was the look I wanted.  I'm not a cherry cabinet kitchen kinda gal.  I'm a white cabinet kitchen girl, so if I had this much cherry cabinetry, I decided to embrace it and tone it down a bit with a dark, dramatic color.  I went with Cinder by Benjamin Moore.  We hired a painter to paint the rooms we wanted done and they did a great job.

Here are a few pictures I took right after we moved in before the painters started. 

Here are those lights again!

 This is looking toward the eat-in kitchen.  You can see where I tried the paint on the wall.  This also shows you what I was meaning...with all the different colors it looks choppy.  I told the painter to paint all the white and green the Cinder color.  He really thought I was insane.

Here's how it looks today!  Huge difference.  The color is a dark grey, but the color changes a lot during the day.

In this picture you can see the changed lights.  More on that in a few!

It's so bright in this kitchen that with the sun out today it was hard to get good pictures.  This is my favorite thing about the kitchen, the light and the windows.  Especially this one over my kitchen sink.

 It's so nice to sit at the island and eat breakfast and see the birds outside in the trees.  It's a beautiful view.

Above the window and the cabinets I decided to go with my vintage, industrial vibe by showcasing some of my favorite things.  My tool box collection, old windows, vintage rowing sign, oars and metal numbers.

The window I found free on the side of the road (love when that happens!).  The orb is the only brand new item in this picture.  I bought it at Home Goods this summer.   The vintage bottles I dug up in our yard.  There are actually hundreds out there buried in the yard.  We've had a lot of fun unearthing them, but still have a lot left to find.  

I have to tell a story about the number.  I found 2 of these at Goodwill this week.  I'd been looking for something similar, but didn't want to pay much.  I found this 5 and a 6 at Goodwill for $2 each.  They were  brand new metal numbers, but then I realized they're cake pans!  I painted each number with a few layers of paint to give them a vintage, aged look.  I'm happy with how they turned out and they're just what I needed to finish this area.

 Here's the other side and a few more of my tools boxes, found vintage bottles and free window.  OH and don't forget my cool cake pan 6!

I'd been looking for used oars since we moved in, but didn't have any luck until this week.  Again at Goodwill!  These babies were $3 each!  They were originally from The Christmas Tree Store and had nautical scenes painted on each one.  I took my sander to each one, then stained them, and painted them in several layers of paint, sanded again and then sealed them with dark wax.  I added the numbers with a stencil I made and for $6 I have 2 vintage looking oars to go with my vintage rowing club sign!

This is the hallway going to the pantry, laundry room, mudroom, garage and second downstairs bathroom.  You can see I added in my vintage library card cabinet, vintage Pepsi crates and bottles here.  Also, I painted the main wall at the end of the hallway with chalkboard paint.  It's the perfect place for us to leave notes for each other.

There are 3 glass door cabinets in the kitchen.  In each one I've placed my vintage kitchen scales.  I have so much space to display things without having a ton of stuff on the counter!

This is one of my favorite scales, filled with vintage kitchen gadgets.

More of those bottles we found in the yard!

I love the huge sliding glass door and it leads out to a large deck.  It's a nice place to sit in the evening, when it's not -15 with the windchill! :-)

This is right above the stove and houses the stove hood.  Everything on here is vintage, except the EAT letters.  Those are from the $1 store, but I layered paint on them, sanded and waxed them to give them that vintage look.

 Back to those lights...I was able to score new lights on clearance at Home Depot for $25 each.  A lot cheaper than the lights I wanted from Restoration Hardware!  Once we got them home, we realized all we really needed to do was change the shades and light bulbs.  Luckily for us, the shades fit the lights perfectly and the lights came with Edison bulbs too!  In case you've never priced Edison bulbs they run about $10 a bulb so it was great they were included in the purchase price of the lights!

I love how the new metal shades and Edison bulbs changed the look of the lights.  Exactly the look I was going for!  The shades are oil rubbed bronze metal, but the inside of the shade is a coppery color.  Love them and they look so cool all lit up!

 This is on the other side of the kitchen which is right above the eat in kitchen.

And there you have it....the kitchen with the dark painted ceilings!  I love our kitchen.  Yes, it's big for the 3 of us, but it's perfect when we have people over.  Everyone always congregates in the kitchen.  We had the Hubby's 50th birthday party here a month after we moved in and it was a great party and entertaining space.  I couldn't be happier with our new home and our new neighborhood.  We're all happy with our decision to buy here.

Thank you for reading!