kitchen renovations

So Greg's mom had been in town a lot over the last 2 months, mostly helping Greg's sister update and decorate their house before their 3rd baby is due in February.  She helped completely remodel both the kids' bedrooms, the master bedroom, the den, bathrooms....yep, the whole house got a MAJOR make-over!  Well, I was at their house one afternoon and Kendall was showing me another remodeling job she had just finished.  She had painted some cabinets in their laundry nook and asked me if I remembered how they looked before.  Well, to be honest, they looked just like the cabinets throughout our kitchen.  And of course when I said that, she jumped on the opportunity to come re-paint our cabinets!  And first thing Saturday morning, we were painting!

So here's how it all went down.  First, here is what our kitchen looked like before. (and I stole some of these pics from my mother-in-law, since she was better at documenting every step of the project than I was. Thanks Kendall!).

We had already taken the cabinet doors off when we took this pic.

and here are the doors...

 

Kendall had this paint, Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and we used a color called "Old Ochre" and wiped a dark wax over it.  The great thing about this paint is we didn't have to use any primer.  The white door below is the "Old Ochre" paint, all the dark ones have the wax applied.

 

Greg was a big help too, even though he didn't understand "the big picture" for a while.

We had to take all the door knobs and hinges off, and we taped off around the appliances, and walls, and anywhere we didn't want to accidentally wipe dark stain.  Halfway through day 1, we also decided the "lovely" tile border had to go.  Check it out.

So to tackle the tile, we primed it with 2 coats of this.

 

Although I would have liked to just paint the tiles white, it was way too difficult to match them perfectly, and I knew they would still stand out, so we matched our paint color to the grout.

And here's our finished kitchen! 

(these pics were taken at night, so the cabinets look pretty dark, but in person they are lighter!)

I decided to update the switch plates as well, since the mismatched ivory ones weren't gonna do anymore. I found these "oil-rubbed bronze" ones at Lowe's.

OH!  and one of my favorite parts of the kitchen......

I've been wanting to paint in inside of our pantry door with chalkboard paint, and here it is!

So there ya have it.  Oh wait, one more thing.  For my birthday, my mother-in-law got me some botanical prints for the front den.  I got some frames for them, and they look great! Now I just gotta get them hung on the wall.  Hopefully tomorrow ;)