Kitchen Redo: Round 1 the Cabinets!

This is the only picture I have of the kitchen when we moved in.  Green and white and while green is my favorite color, I really hated this kitchen which is probably why I have no pictures. 

So I repainted it.  I picked a light blue-green that I thought was turquoise but ends up more of a blue topaz color. I still wasn't happy.   The white cabinets were painted with a terrible flat paint and impossible to look or keep clean!  

So I went to work.  I spent the last several days redoing my kitchen cabinets. 

 First step is to paint the white a turquoise base coat.  This is a kitchen paint.  Highly durable and best of all, completely washable!   

I like the paint but it was too normal and not at all fun.   The great thing about paint is that when you are doing it, if you hate it.  You start over.   Paint is cheap. Still, I had other plans.  Antiquing the cabinets!  This fits in perfectly with my 1970's home, don't you think?

This was the trial wall.  I took a glaze medium I got at Home Depot and I mixed 4 parts glaze to 1 part black paint.   This turns out to be a very forgiving way to go.  You basically paint the black glaze over the paint the. Take a cloth or paper towel and start removing paint.  The good news is you can put some of the wet glaze over the dry if you don't like the outcome and it will remove the glaze. To put the finishing touches on the look when everything was dry I flicked some of the glaze to make little dots. Here is an up-close! Do you love it? I do! 

Now let me remind you, I am 44 years old and I am standing all this time on tile floor while climbing up and down ladders.  This is fun but easy on your back and shoulders this is not! 

I loved the look and realized very early on that if I wanted this kitchen to pop, I needed something to contrast the turquoise overload I was about to have.  Now, let me say this.   I am blessed with a very giving husband.  He would look at me as I painted the white cabinets (his favorite kind of cabinets) and shrug saying "whatever you want, but are you sure it isn't going to be too dark?

As I painted I worried the same thing. So I did what every woman does and I turned to Pinterest for inspiration and quickly realized what I needed.  I needed red!  Have I mentioned I hate red?*

What I ended up with is an amazing kitchen! A touch 50's and very country.  It's a kitchen I can almost live with....until I redo the counters.   That's my next project and I know where I am going with that but that's next week's project! 

*(Now to be fair, I spent money only on red spray paint and repainted my own stuff and bought some red towels, for which I had none.)