Changing the color scheme of the Kitchen~

Christmas is put away and it's time to make a few refreshing changes around the house!

I have always liked this green bar. It's the first thing I painted when we moved into the house.

I ended up painting the kitchen a tan color that I didn't think blended very well with the green or my red couches. The combination of it all was a little sliver in my mind, but I didn't want to change it all after I just painted so I let it simmer. After Christmas I had some Christmas money from family and it seemed like a fun time to give the kitchen a new look.

Here's what the wall looked like before. I know the stripe looks red, but it's really orange. 

I need to work on my photoshop skills to be able to accurately represent, but you get the idea.

I actually really liked the tan with the orange...like I said, it just didn't work with everything else as well as I'd hoped it would.  

First of all I decided to add some trim to the bar. If I was going to be painting anyway, might as well add a little more character.  I bought primed pieces of mdf at Home Depot. The whole project cost me $10.

I've wanted to try and add gray accents into the kitchen. I have gray in other rooms of my home, but I just wasn't sure how it would look next to my dark brown cabinets so I just painted gray in the picture frames. I really like the gray and the brown together, which was a relief because it's always a bummer to spend time and money painting if you don't like the end result.

  

 I wanted to put vinyl Chevron stripes into the blocks instead of painting them, but the space was too large and the vinyl kept peeling off. That was going to be annoying so I had to paint. It turned out to be more of a beastly project than I was expecting... but what can you do.

Couple tips that I learned along the way: If you are using vinyl or painters tape as a stencil, do a couple stripes at a time and then pull the vinyl off while the paint is still wet.

Also, paint the darker color LAST.  I wasn't planning on painting at all, so I did the gray first. I had to paint a few layers of white to cover the gray and during that time the paint would dry and pull up with the stencil.

I spent a lot of time doing touchup surgery.

After all was said and done, I was happier with paint. It was a softer look than the bright white vinyl and I don't have to worry about the kids pulling it off;)

 I'm still debating whether or not to paint the shelf and the trim gray.  Thoughts??

In an effort to brighten the room and match the bar, I painted the walls white.

I thought it might be nice to pull in the gray, so I painted a door and had The Joe help me hang it. 

It's solid wood, so it was HEAVY!!

Circa means approximately or about. A little different take on "Established 1999"

I decided to add some black to help ground the room, and it was a good excuse to make a new sign:)

At first I was planning on building shelves onto the door, but there's not a ton of room to walk around the table in our dining room so I cut the boards down and made a few littler shelves for the adjacent wall.

Easiest shelves on the planet. One wider board and two smaller ones. 

Since they weren't going to be holding a lot of weight I just nailed them together. 

All of the decor was Target clearance and totaled $15

I still have to paint the rest of the room, so I had to take a few strategic shots that I could share with you.

Thanks for dropping by. Happy New Year!