I’ve been working on various homemaking/improving projects as well as tending sick little ones and writing. Most of my writing has been the paid variety, which by necessity prevented me from having much to actually share here; however, I wanted to share some of what I’ve been doing. This is my kitchen cabinet project.
My home is a lived in one, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try to make it nice. I spend a lot of my time at home living and working. Because of that I want to make sure it feels like a comfortable welcoming place. For the past two weeks I’ve been taking on the repainting of my?cabinets, or more?accurately?adding a detail that was not previously there to enhance the overall appearance of my kitchen.
When we first purchased the house we now live in one of the things that appealed to us was the fact that every room was painted a different color. There are absolutely no white walls here. It is a very colorful interior and one I’ve been trying to work with, though I have changed a few room colors. The originally orange den is now my corn husk green library, and one of the originally blue rooms is now my daughter’s?lavender?bedroom. I also had a friend paint a mural on my son’s bedroom wall. I am not afraid of color.
Since first moving in I’ve been studying my kitchen, which has yellow walls, light blue cabinets with silver satin?fixtures, and white tile on the floor and along the wall below the cabinets. I love my kitchen, colors and all, but I’ve always felt that something was missing, some detail left unfinished. My mother-in-law gave me five English plates with a rich blue pastoral design on a white background. Rather than add them to our dinnerware I decided to hang them above the sink, and that’s when I got the idea for the detail missing from the kitchen cabinets.
The cabinets were designed with an indented detail line (I’m sure there is a more technically correct term for it), but the cabinets were painted a solid color. It?occurred?to me that by adding a darker shade of blue, one that would complement the blue of the plates, the final missing detail to the kitchen would be complete. I went to Home Depot and chose Space Hero Blue from the Disney colors by Behr because I liked its vibrancy and it seemed more fun to me than simply picking navy blue, which I’m sure would have worked just as well.
As I have two kids and three cats and no way of really closing off any part of my house for an extended length of time I took down a cabinet door a day, painted in the detail, which required?multiple?coats for the even look I wanted, and replaced it. Sometimes I managed to do two doors a day, but I took my time. I did not rush, and I made sure to work around my family. I am loving the finished product.
Too often I think we put off projects because we think we don’t have the time to do them. This year as part of my goal to make due with what I have and utilize my creativity more I’ve decided to look at things differently. Instead of doing things big, I’m going to be working small. By setting aside about an hour a day I was able to add what seems like such a trivial detail to my kitchen without interrupting or?disrupting life in my home. I didn’t even get a headache like I used to when I tried to get everything done as quickly as possible.
What projects could you get done if you broke them down into smaller mini projects? What do you think about my cabinets?
The cabinets look great. I think in my house, the best mini-project we could do is to replace a pair of light fixtures below the stairs. They point upward – straight into my bedroom at the top of the steps. It would take only a couple hours to take them down and install new ones!