The Bungalow Kitchen Refresh – Missing the Mark

Hi Everyone!

So I was starting to get the itch, friends.  The itch for something fresh and different.  For a little bit of a change in our home and this time it was directed at the kitchen.  If you guys have been with me for a while, you know I get the itch to change things up every few years because I have a nomadic spirit. Since we aren’t moving anytime soon, something has to give.

We’ve been in our little bungalow coming up on 3 years in August (how in the heck did that happen!), so I’ve been looking around and thinking of areas where I can freshen things up. I’d been wanting to change up the kitchen cabinet color for a while. Since we will FINALLY be installing our new floor tiles soon, I figured now is the perfect time to do so.  I’ve enjoyed having the black cabinets, but I knew when we got ready to put in the black floors I wanted to change up the color.  There was a tonal difference between the black of our cabinets and the black of the tiles that drove me BANANAS.

After coming across the most gorgeous emerald green kitchen EVER almost a year ago I’ve had my heart set on going green in our kitchen:

Sooooo freakin good, right? Immediately, I fell in love and was so inspired by it.  I knew I wanted green, but emerald was out of the question for us so I thought to go the way of olive green.  That color direction felt much more my speed…..earthy/moody/a little more boho than glam or traditional.  And once I saw some pretty amazing inspiration kitchens, I was even more in love with the idea.

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After swatching what felt like a million olive samples, I finally decided on Dark Olive by Benjamin Moore. You’ll have to excuse the fact that I was a bad blogger and forgot to take real pics of this process.  I just have cell phone pics to share.  After getting the first coat on I loved it, but  I felt like the color was reading quite grey and the olive got a bit lost… especially during certain times of the day.

So I decided to take the color back to BM and have it adjusted just a bit.  I amped up the green, deepened it and made some of the grey disappear.  The result was a gorgeous, deep, ultra moody olive green I absolutely LOVED.  I snapped a couple shots during different times of the day.

You guys.  This color was sooooo good. I loved it. Like genuinely loved it.  My problem with it is it felt confusing IN THIS SPACE.  Especially once I laid down a few of the new floor tiles.

The tiles and the cabinets got totally lost within each other, especially when seeing and being in the space in person…. which just felt weird. I don’t mind the floor sorta blending into the cabinets, but the undertone or something was off.  I just had this nagging feeling like this was NOT the way to go here.  And boy, did that feeling suck!  For multiple reasons.

First, as a designer and creative, you hate to have to see your vision NOT play out the way you thought and hoped it would.  And second, it sucked because I had just gone through all the work of painting them and knew I was most likely going to have to do it all over again!!  uggggghhh.  Thankfully our kitchen is really small and we only have 5 cabinets, so the expense and time necessary to redo them wasn’t too big an issue at all.

 

It’s Just Paint…

You guys should know that I’m a very very color confident person.  I have zero fear when it comes to using color, or with going big and bold with it. RARELY do I second guess myself. But after living with them for a couple of days I KNEW I was going to have to change them. I had missed the mark and it just wasn’t working, so I started thinking about things from a different perspective.

The overall goal for the space is for it to feel moody/earthy/boho.  I also knew I wanted green cabinets, but not necessarily that they HAD TO BE olive. And also, the floors are non negotiable.  Once I regrouped and looped back to those facts, I started to consider a green with a bit more of an intense, richer tone. I thought something in the hunter green or more jewel tone family may be the better choice here. Also, I just happened to come across this kitchen the same day and was immediately sold…

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I mean COME ON…. right!!  Literally EVERY element of this space is my forever home kitchen goals.  I’ll be tucking this into the files and referring to it years from now when we get to that point, for sure.  I love the depth of this color against the light wood countertops, and the mix of copper (which is already happening in our kitchen) is just an absolute delight.  It’s a little bluer that I wanna go, but this is definitely the feel I’m going for.

Feeling much more focused and refreshed and inspired, I grabbed a few more samples and chose a color I’m just freakin CRAZY about.  I spent the weekend repainting the cabinets and they are curing up now.  I can’t wait to pull the kitchen back together again and share the finished results.  In the meantime if you follow me on IG, you’ll get some peeks in my stories.

 

THE Primer

Also if you’ve been looking for a primer that covers literally almost EVERY surface, including Ikea laminate cabinet boxes and doors, you NEEEEED to get Stix by Inslx.  It was a game changer for me.  Zinsser’s  Cover Stain and BIN 123 have always been my go-to for primer, but this stuff right here though…… I’ll never use another primer ever again.  It’s a Benjamin Moore brand so my trust radar was way high, but once I tried it for myself, I realized it was just freakin good.  The combo of that primer plus my fav Benjamin Moore Advance paint means this finish will last and won’t be chipping or peeling… even off of laminate.

Ok, so thanks for sticking with me here guys.  This was a long one.  But I really wanted to share with you guys the process and show that we don’t always get it right the first time. You’re not alone, it happens to the best of us. You just gotta refocus, go back to what the main goal is, and keep pushing.  You’ll get it right in the end.  And remember…. it’s just paint!!

Until next time friends….

Xo-Shavonda

Posted By: Shavonda Gardner · In: diy, interiors, thecottagebungalow