Monday, June 27, 2011

The Bug

When we lived in our little house in town, we painted the great room and hallway bright, sunshiney yellow. I wanted a yellow that woke you up, that made you happy forcibly and that said, "Look at us, we are sooo cheery!" There were a lot of exclamation points in that yellow. (Figuratively. We didn't actually paint exclamation points on the wall, although...)

We lived with that color for a little more than three years. I loved it. Right up until I hated it. And it was sudden. One night, The Husband and I were having a fight. I don't even remember what we were fighting about, but we were fighting. We finally reached a peace and were sitting quietly watching TV. Except. When he looked over at me, I had a monumental scowl plastered across my face. Wondering if maybe the fight was back on, he mustered his most innocent voice and asked what was wrong.

This is where our accounts vary. In his version, I growled, "I HATE this yellow." My version leaves me sounding only slightly more ladylike. In any case, my tolerant husband whisked me to a home improvement wonderland where we picked up about 7,000 paint chips, which we taped around our living room for a week while I made up my mind.

My mind settled on Gypsy Rose and Pine Needle. And how I adore those colors. In fact, I love them so much that when we moved, I painted the new living room in the same exact shades. (If you knew me, you would know what a big deal this truly is. I'm a little paint happy.)

When we bought this house, I took that opportunity to redo just about everything except the living room. The only rooms that were spared my roller and edge brush were the bathroom (which is my favorite color on the planet) and the kitchen which is... well... not. (See, I bought my house from my mom so I'm really insulting her tastes here, but I'm trying to forge ahead.)

The kitchen is blue. Blue and gray floors, blue and gray and tan countertops and blue walls. Lots of blue. To make a few changes on a budget, I added in a lot of chocolate brown when I moved in, so I have that going on, which has tempered the blue. Also, the base cabinets are white and the top cabinets are stained wood and kinda 70's looking. This was not anyone's design choice, so don't look at my mom that way.

Anyway, I've been bitten by that same bug that growled about the yellow walls. (Not that I'm admitting to growling.) I want to redo the "shared" spaces in my house in the "farmhouse" style. Leaving the girls' rooms as they are, I want to make the rest of house have a continuous theme and feel. And I want to start in the kitchen. This is going to (by financial necessity) be sort of a one-project-at-a-time kind of thing. And I'm going to be looking at cheap, cosmetic fixes, not a total rehaul to my kitchen. As much as I would like to buy vintage appliances and get concrete counter tops, it just ain't happnin'.

The problem is that I have so much I want to accomplish and I don't know where to start. I have to make changes in a way that the kitchen never looks too crazy, because I'm having my annual influx of company October/November/December and I won't be done by then, so I'd like it to look like people live there. People who aren't into industrial deconstructed or small bomb making in the kitchen.

What I really want to do right now is paint my top cabinets. All I need is a color scheme and I can get started.

Which is what all this rambling comes down to. I need your help, blogosphere. (Although I reserve the right to  completely and totally ignore all your sage advice and do my own thing. /disclaimer) Keeping in mind that I am going to have to keep the blue floor and counter tops at the very least for the short term, I need two paint colors - one for my walls and one for my cabinets.

A few notes for your consideration:

  • I like my kitchens light and airy, not dark and pubby. 
  • I'd really like to work in barn red somewhere, although I could use that for a pop color if needed.
  • I am allergic to most neutrals, but love all things brown. Not tan or cream or beige (blech) but good and truly brown.
  • My "art" in my kitchen is antique and faux antique Coca-Cola advertisements. My favorites are the ladies, but I also love the farm scenes. I've always thought the idea of bottle green would be nice for my Coke stuff, but have never figured out how to do this, since bottle green doesn't translate well to opaque. 
So, there you have it world. Give me colors!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the interest of saving money and making a big impact wtih litter effort, I say you go with a very light sky blue (more periwinkle--you know, bright but so pale it's not so four-year-old) and paint the top cabinets white (or slightly off white). That way, it can be farmesque. And the red would look fab in small doses, and you could get about six green bottles (or four, and two actual vases) and keep wildflowers in them (like, one each). And if you really wanted to go all out, you could get green glass drawer pulls, which would be fabulastic but probably expensive.

In theory.

ann

Suze said...

We have authentic vintage metal cupboards in our kitchen, painted glossy white with chrome hardware. I like it. When/if we redo and expand the kitchen, I want new cupboards (that aren't rusty and will stay shut) that look just like the ones we have now. And I want red walls (I will have to talk my husband into that), either barn red or vintage red, or tomato red. Anyway, sorry I don't have suggestions. I tend towards neutrals, so I'm probably not a good person to ask. What about cream with red edging? Do your cupboards have edges or plain fronts?