UncategorizedGuest Post Day 3 – Tina's Kitchen Makeover July 25, 2012Welcome to the third day of Guest Posts in our Week of House Tours! I’m so thankful for these six ladies who are sharing their homes with us while I’m away in Nicaragua. Today, we have Tina from Thrifting with Cake. Tina will be sharing her kitchen redo with us. Tina is so kind and definitely has a great eye for design, so I’m very happy that she’s here! Here’s her post and her kitchen tour in her own words: *** Hello Everyone! First and foremost: Thanks so much to Lindsay for allowing me to guest post here about my mini-kitchen renovation! At the very least, I hope it inspires someone to paint something that they find unattractive in their own home! I sincerely believe most things can be cured with a coat of white paint. Our Kitchen in 2008. Oak Stain. Orange-y formica counter tops that I hated (I don’t mind them at all now) microwave with a “vent” that did nothing. Every time we had the “nerve” to cook anything, the house smelled of food for days. Good times? You know it! Mid 2008- 2011. The only thing that helped the look I hated was to downplay it all with a darker paint color. This is “manor house” by Sherwin Williams. It helped. I loved it for awhile but the Minnesota winters are long and dark. Over time, we longed for color. We painted yellow and light green in the spring of 2011. That is when the country HIT the fan! It looked terrible. All of that work painting and the kitchen looked worse than when we started! I knew we needed to do something. I finally talked my husband into redoing the kitchen because we both disliked it so much. We decided to stain the cabinets a darker color, an espresso or ebony. We began the long process of sanding. Many trips to Home Depot, many pieces of sandpaper…handsanders, power sanders..sanders that rained down sideways (nod to Forrest Gump!)..you get the idea. It took a LONG time and honestly..it was not fun at all. My arms and hands hurt by days end and maybe my soul did too. I felt defeated. Midway through sanding (with all cabinet doors off and all of our junk out for display!) my husband ended up needing hip surgery. You guessed it. Project came to a screeching halt and this is what our kitchen looked like from late fall through early spring. Jealous much? I eventually couldn’t stand it anymore, but didn’t feel like I had mad skillz to stain all of it myself. I envisioned mistakes, glops of stain and so I told my husband “You can’t really help right now, white is classic and why don’t you just become okay with them being painted?” Cue mystical music..he agreed! (I had tried this white idea years before much to his dismay!) After! I love it! Even Brad my husband said “You were right and we should’ve done this a long time ago.” The hood was bought online for around $300 and get this..IT REALLY VENTS TO THE OUTDOORS! The magnetic backsplash was an eBay find for around $50. Paint was from Home Depot. Low VOC, regular Behr. It wasn’t the ultra, just the regular paint and it took three coats. Could it have used a fourth? Possibly, but it looks good AND at a certain point there just needed to be a wrap up for the sake of sanity. Love, love, love it now! Totally worth the time, effort and elbow grease. Once I started painting it took me about a week from start to finish. I had to do most of it myself as my husband was working nightshifts at the hospital (he’s a nurse) and I just wanted to finish. I can honestly say that I am happy everyday when I see it. I won’t lie. I have NO desire to do anything like this again anytime soon…but I am super happy with the results! Thanks for viewing! *** A big thanks to Tina for sharing her lovely kitchen redo with us. It really looks wonderful! Isn’t it amazing what white paint can do??? I know they did A LOT more than that, but even that makes such a huge difference. Y’all give her some love and go check out her blog.
Ashley says July 25, 2012 at 4:41 pm Tina I love your yellow, black, and white color scheme! The white cabinets really do look great. Reply
Tina says July 25, 2012 at 8:28 pm Thanks Ashley! As my husband and I were looking at the old photos, he said “wow, our old kitchen really WAS ugly!”…it made me laugh. 🙂 Reply