Stenciling an Accent Wall

We are approaching the end of our kitchen renovation, which means I’m starting to add the final design touches to the room.  I decided I wanted to do an accent wall that is located in our eat-in kitchen area.  The wall connects the family room and kitchen and is where our table is located.   I decided to use the Lazy Sun color we used for the family room and a lighter grey to help the transition between the yellow family room and charcoal colored kitchen.  I used a Moroccan stencil from http://www.cuttingedgestencils.com/craft-furniture-stencil.html, called Casablanca.  It took hours upon hours, and I was quite a mess  (I recommend watching the how to video BEFORE starting), but I think it was worth it!  I needed to live with it for a little while before making up my mind………

It took hours and hours….. but in the end think it was worth it! What do you think?

 

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Counter tops and sink, so important to a kitchen!

Yeah!  Our counter tops finally showed up (about 2 weeks late).  They are beautiful, but more work than I thought they’d be.  My poor husband had to seal the bottom side of them with 4 coats of mineral oil/ beeswax mix.  Then he started to place them and found out that our walls are not quite square (anywhere!).  One wall was so bad that it was flush at the beginning, and then about 2 feet later had an inch gap from the wall.  So we had to make some decisions and it ended up adding more work to the project.

We hadn’t  planned on doing a wooden piece as a back splash, but just wanted the marble tile tp go right to the counter top and then seal it.  Well, that wasn’t going to work anymore because of the gaps and uneven cabinets (another problem).  So we decided on a small 1″ x 2″ maple board to trim out the counter tops, and then the marble tile would continue from there.   When the counter tops finally were installed my husband then had to seal the top as well.  He did 2 coats of the mineral oil/beeswax combination, and then 4 coats of just mineral oil.  The counter tops took longer to install then planned, but oh, so worth it!

Counter tops the day they were delivered getting acclimated.

Counter top on our desk area

Our spectacular new LARGE sink, 19″ wide x 32″ long x 10″ deep.   Dan installed it using the under mount method with our new counter tops.  He clamped it to allow the adhesive to set overnight.

Aidan and Daddy installing the new garbage disposal, very exciting!!!

Making it pretty using color…..

It’s amazing how exciting the beginning of a renovation is…… ordering items, making final decisions, dreaming about what the room will look like………then as time goes on you just want it to be done, over, finis!  We have been renovating now for a little over a month and things have been going well, but we both are at the point of saying “Are we done yet?”   Almost.

We began the renovation by cleaning out the whole room and then painting.  We decided to go with a grey and yellow color scheme for the walls, espresso for the cabinets and then a light maple butcher block counter top.  The jewelry of the room is the polished Carrera marble tile we are using for the back splash.  We went with a brick patterned tile with each piece being 1″ x 2″.  The grout we used is is a light grey/silver and with the grey veining in the marble it looks beautiful with the grey walls behind.

Painted Espresso Cabinets (Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations) and Hardware from Ikea.

Color of family room area- (yellow)  Lazy Sun- Valspar Signature,

Kitchen (gray)-  City Storm Valspar Signature

Back Splash- Carrera Marble found on Amazon

Kitchen Accessories

Here are some pictures of other items we purchased for the kitchen and were part of my design plan.  For some reason I had a hard time putting them in my Picasa collage!  I will put them here and let you know where they are from!  I really enjoyed designing this kitchen and trying….. to follow a budget.  Our original budget was $3,ooo for the cost of all of the materials because my husband and father-in-law were the labor force!  However, I think the total is now probably closer to $4,000 maybe more, but oh! so worth it. I simply cannot believe the transformation, and if we had contractors come in it probably would have been about 4-5 times more expensive.  My husband is amazing!

Above are a few items we purchased for our kitchen.  The shelving is from Ikea.  Very reasonably priced.  We ended up going with a high gloss white finish.  We are having open shelving where we took out the soffit and upper cabinets.  The hood we purchased is from Zipline and we purchased it on Amazon for $299, love it!  The chandelier is from West Elm and is $199.  They have been on back order for a while but we found it on Ebay for a little cheaper.  It was never used, unopened and we had it in less than a week!

Above is a pantry door.  We plan on doing something similar with ours.  We are going to cut out the louvers and then put in plexi-glass that is frosted so you can’t see through it!  Our counter tops are maple butcher block from Lumber Liquidators and we spend about $900.  They are absolutely beautiful and we kept them fairly light.

  This picture was the reason we decided to paint our cabinets espresso and used the Rustoleum cabinet transformations   We have black appliances and I was not sure how they would look with dark cabinets.  When I found this picture I knew it would work!  So now we have espresso cabinets, butcher block counter tops, and a large, beautiful under-mount sink like this inspiration picture!

My husband and I plan to do this renovation and then save for the next 4 years to do a major overhaul of the whole downstairs of our home!  However,  during the next 4 years there are going to be several small projects to keep us busy! 🙂

Kitchen Design Board

Just created a design board for the first time using Picasa.   I was unable to import some of my other pictures and inspirations, but will try and add them in a separate post.  I got the inspiration for this from a blog that I will link to here:  http://askannamoseley.com/2012/09/how-to-create-a-design-board/

She has a lot of great ideas!!!!

I created this design board to show my thought process in planning and designing our kitchen.  I wanted to show all of my ideas and products purchased before actually showing them in our wonderful new kitchen!

Our 1984 Kitchen Renovation– Before……

We moved into our 1984 contemporary style home in October of 2011.  Since then we have been doing small projects here and there,  trying to make our house feel more like a home.  I plan on adding some of our smaller projects to this blog as well, but need to get through this kitchen renovation first!  🙂

After a year and a half in our home we decided it was time to tackle the outdated kitchen.  My husband is a wonderful cook and the kitchen, which is not styled to our liking also has some issues of functionality as well.  So we decided instead of gutting it, which we’d like to do in the future, we would design and renovate it ourselves to make it prettier and more functional.  The home owner we purchased the house from did a good job of updating the tile flooring in the kitchen, especially once we saw the linoleum he had covered!  He also tried to make the counter tops more pleasing to the eye by tiling them as well.  They do look better than the bright orange laminate counter top we found underneath, but they are extremely hard to clean and we don’t have one continuous flat surface in the kitchen to prepare food.  They also put in a beige sink that while very large, stains very easily and no amount of scrubbing and use of cleaning products has helped!!!!  So it was time to make this kitchen our own!!!  The kitchen is part of one big room that includes an eat in portion and a family room.  We decided to empty out the entire room and repaint everything….. I will be keeping the same furniture, but will changing and adding some new decorative touches to make the whole room seem new and renovated!

Before Pictures:  The only thing we changed from the previous owner in these pictures was the paint color which used to be a fleshy color.   We painted the walls grey and added curtains and the new lighting above our table.