Holy kitchen!

After weeks- months- of no visible work, a miracle occurred. We went on vacation, and when we came back, our kitchen was painted. All credit goes to my lovely and incredibly talented father, who, along with my mother, came down to Texas to watch our pets and home while we took a break from the city. Remember the kitchen?

While we were gone, Dad wanted to know what we were working on. Unfortunately, the big project we needed to tackle was the kitchen. Since our last post, the oil stains had kept reappearing through the coats of paint. A quick Google brought up a product called BIN primer, which is an alcohol-based primer for all kinds of uses.

A coat of that took away ALL the seeping oil spots. In a kitchen, all of the cabinet fronts are just covered in oil. This was also true for our wood wainscot, especially near the cooktop. On top of all of that, the cabinets had been stained with some kind of gel or oil stain that was incredibly stubborn.

The problem is, the primer smells AWFUL. It must be like 100% VOC or something. It absolutely works, but every time I used it, I'd get lightheaded and sick, so I couldn't get anything done. With Andrew at work all the time, it was up to me to get the painting done, and I couldn't do it. We discussed  hiring a company to come out and paint the cabinets for us, but we really hesitated. The few quotes I'd gotten weren't promising- most people wanted to spray the cabinets, some with the doors on still. Caulking and filling problem areas would cost us a ton of money, and we couldn't be sure of the quality. Not to mention possible overspray on the new cabinets, appliances... I'm still scraping paint overspray off the bathroom tile.

Enter my dad, a man who does things the right way the first time. First, he removed the doors and sanded down the cabinets, filling divots and smoothing the surface. They already looked better:

Then, he primed and painted every surface of the boxes.

We came home to the kitchen looking like it does above. I was speechless. The cabinets I'd almost given up on (by tearing them out and replacing them!) looked beautiful. All we had to do was put up the doors. We picked up the hardware at Ikea for a steal. Here's the finished cabinets:

We removed the doors on the two cabinets above the entryways, creating cubbyholes. One holds my collection of flower vases:

And the other stores the cookbooks and recipes:

I love these cubbies, but may put some fancy paper along the backs of the cubbies to make them bright and interesting. Nothing permanent, of course. And possibly some lighting or something to brighten them up. The biggest problem in our kitchen now is getting a nice equal distribution of light everywhere.

Once we put in the under-cabinet lighting, we should have a much brighter space. But in order to do that, we need a tiled backsplash. I agonized over the right tile for this space. I was initially hoping for a plain subway tile, which just seemed too plain when I visualized it. I wanted something a little old school, and was thrilled when I saw this beehive slate from Daltile:

It's shiny and reflective and neutral enough to work with multiple color schemes in a kitchen, but it's not boring. We happily ordered it. It arrived here two days later, but when I opened the box...

Blah. I got some of the tiles wet, as you can see in the picture, to determine if the shine was going to come out with some kind of sealer or finish... I don't have high hopes. Off to read the installation instructions and call Daltile for verification on the shade... I'll keep you posted!