The Old Kitchen:

Wow! Have you ever seen a more true “color crayon blue” than in my old kitchen?

This is what our kitchen looked like when we moved in, about five years ago. The tile in the kitchen was almost a deal breaker. My sister kept reminding me, “It’s only the cosmetic things you don’t like. You can always change those things.” The kitchen felt very dark and dreary. I was truly afraid of what might be hiding in the black grout, in between the color crayon blue tiles. I remember the first day I moved in. My sister and nieces came riding their bikes down the street and there was a beautiful bouquet of deep, dark, blue hydrangeas in one of the baskets on the bike. They told me I should try to “embrace the blue.”

Curtains! That’s what I needed to help me embrace the blue. I started thinking about blue and yellow, stripes, ticking, french country. I could totally embrace the blue! This would be fine! You can see the lovely fabric I chose in the pictures above. It was exactly the french country look I was going for. I added a little yellow check to the room and I could ALMOST live with it.

We lived with the blue on the counters for about a year and then I couldn’t stand it anymore. I tried to embrace the blue and do a little french country theme. No such luck. I started shopping for new counters. Of course, a big granite slab would have been my first choice, but that’s just not in the budget for this part time kindergarten teacher. We found some great ceramic tile. We brought home several samples and looked at them for weeks. Months. Returned them. Looked at more samples for weeks. Months. I didn’t even know where to begin! I didn’t have a vision or any sort of inspiration.

This whole kitchen experience happened PBS (pre blog stalking). Not knowing there was a world of obsessed blogging decorators, the only way I knew how to get my online design fix was to realestalk. That’s the term for a person (me) who checks out the real estate websites multiple times during the day, just to see pictures of how people decorate, stage for buyers, and update their homes. I was just about stopped in my tracks the day I saw a house identical to ours, recently remodeled, and it had the perfect kitchen! It was the first time I could visualize what I wanted my kitchen to look like, because I was actually looking at “my” kitchen online. It was so amazing! That very day I called the listing agent, contacted the previous owner, and found the name of person who installed their granite tile. By the weekend I was at Home Depot, finding almost identical granite tile on CLEARANCE (woo hoo). Monday morning the tile guys came and it was like my Fairy Godmother had waved her magic wand. Months of thinking about what we wanted came to a quick end, just because we finally had inspiration.

I have found, over the past few years, that I am not the most artistic person. Inspiration doesn’t just strike me, like it does with some people. I spend hours reading home improvement books, looking through magazines, checking out my favorite blogs, and looking through catalogs for new ideas – inspiration. Creativity does not come naturally to me, but I keep working at it.

The New Kitchen:

I’m linking this to Metamorphasis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch.

When we were newlyweds, my husband and I splurged. We went to The Bon Marche Furniture Store and bought a beautiful blonde oak dining table and four matching chairs. It wasn’t one of those dark oak tables that were so 80’s. It was a pale, yellowish oak that looked so 90’s. Fast forward fifteen years… it was still a pale, yellowish oak table that looked so 90’s.

I started shopping around last summer, thinking it may be time to update our first purchase as a married couple. Hmmm… I guess it had been a while since I had been furniture shopping. I had sticker shock. I couldn’t imagine spending $800 on a kitchen table that my kids would color, paint, and spill all over. The answer to my problem came in the shape of mouse ears. Mouse Ears is the perfect shade of black Behr paint from Home Depot. It’s from the Disney line, which is why the name is Mouse Ears.

I started by finding an inspiration picture in the Pottery Barn catalog. The picture had the same shape table and same style chairs, but in a more modern color. What would I do without Pottery Barn?

Next came the sanding, lots and lots of sanding. I sanded for days. I finally felt like it was perfect. No trace of varathane or the old yellow stain could be seen on the table top… so I thought. Once I put the first coat of stain on, I realized that the color was horribly uneven. It was because I hadn’t gotten ALL of the varathane off and the stain couldn’t penetrate to the wood. So, back to sanding I went. My helpers (ages 8 and 5)assisted with the next sanding process. We sanded for a few more days. When we thought it was perfect we sanded some more. It was a lot of work, but it was worth doing it again. We had a much better look the second time around.

We painted the base of the table and all of the chairs with primer and then 4, YES FOUR, coats of Mouse Ears. I put several coats of varathane on the table, but decided not to varathane the chairs. I figured they would get pretty banged up and I wanted to be able to touch them up with black paint as needed.

Then we waited. I wouldn’t let anyone sit on the chairs or use the table for about two weeks, so I was sure the paint had time to cure. Again, worth the wait. Meanwhile, I decided to paint the stools in the kitchen with my Mouse Ears paint.

Overall, I spent many hours on the project, but I’d say it was worth it. We have a new table without spending much money. It’s updated, and so 2010. I won’t be upset if the kids color all over it, because it’s the same table I’ve had for fifteen years.

After my daughter saw the finished product, she said, “What are you going to do when you get tired of black?” My response was, “Maybe 5 years from now I’ll like the cottage look and we’ll paint everything white!” She said, “Oh, no. Here we go again.”