Thursday, July 4, 2013

Time for a change...

... and no, not to the blog, but my kitchen!

For those of you who know me in real life know that I LOVE colour - so much so that when I painted my kitchen 8 years ago I took a bold leap with red.  The bulk of kitchen, i.e. cabinets and walls, were painted ivory but the portion below counter height was red, that is Behr Paint "Daredevil Red" was is an exact match with my mixer Big Red. ;)  The prep and painting took about a week of my time because the red needed one coat of grey primer and three coats of red for full colour saturation.  I separated the two colours with a small cherry border at counter height.  About 5 years ago, I got bored and applied a new, much wider border that looked like a French village street scene.

Now, I do still love red - it's my favourite colour after almost every shade of green, but it was getting a bit worn around the doorways and I was getting bored with it - all of it!  My girls are horrified - they have decreed that almost any other colour will be "boring" because I've been toning down my colour choices in the last few years.  Friends keep saying "but I love that red!"  Sorry gang, but I'm the one living with it, so it's my choice to make the a change.

Where initially it looked French-influenced (border, mugs, bowls, artwork), now it's going to look more rustic.  I have quite a bit of art in the room, including 2 fruit and veg paintings by my daughter, and all my red tools, gadgets and collectibles will remain including this little chicken dish:


When I was in South Carolina, I picked up a really cute repro vanilla extract bottle, that looks like these.  It's an homage to my love of baking:


And so it this, which will get hung on the wall - it's just like my grandmother's egg beater:


I've already displayed vintage cookie cutters in a jar that were my mum's, just like these:


 (All images courtesy Google.com)

I made sure to take before shots, because I really did love how it looked, and I'll take some afters with the new paint colour, new chair covers and accessories from around the house.  After scraping off the border last weekend, this one will be spent washing the walls and priming that red.  Then I'll need another weekend to tape and paint before I can enjoy my handiwork.