Putting our Life...I Mean Kitchen..Back Together

About a week after we painted the cabinets and while the door faces were drying I felt it was time to put our life….I mean kitchen….back together. 

All the dishes, cookware, microwave island, etc. slowly navigated back to its home.  Having everything back in its rightful place makes the project seem not so bad and almost all complete.  It has been a rough project because we use our kitchen so much, but we have been managing.  Updates of the completed project are coming soon! 

Phase Two: Puttin' on the Paint

After we prepped our cabinets and sanded them down, we used de-glosser to make sure the paint would stick to the boards extra good.  Deglosser does the job of sanding, but for this project we wanted to be extra careful so we did both!  We used a cloth to wipe a thin coat of deglosser all over the cabinets.While we waited for the deglosser to dry we opened our beautiful can of Behr semi gloss enamel paint and primer in one in the lovely shade of ostrich.

Then we made what I’m thinking is a little mistake. Okay maybe a big mistake....but I assure you it wasn't disasterious. You see we added Floetrol to the paint.  This is a product used to help decrease brush stokes in the paint and makes the paint take longer to dry so you can finesse it so it is juuuust right.  It also makes the paint a bit thinner than normal.  Since our wooden cabinets had pretty deep wood grain, the thinner paint settled into the cracks easier causing the wood grain to become apparent.  This might have been a good product for wood that is flatter and you are worried about brush strokes.  In the end the painting method we used cut down on roller marks significantly where we had virtually none, so brush marks weren’t our issue.  What we did have however, is a paint job that took several more coats than we anticipated due to the thinness of the paint.      

We first used a typical roller to roll on nice thin layers of paint.  Afterwards we came through with a fine roller that looked like a sponge.  The fine roller doesn’t hold a lot of paint so you wouldn’t want to do your paint job with it….BUT rolling over your existing paint job helps smooth your paint out a ton! A 2 inch brush was used to help get into the corners and the tricky spots.  I used a small art brush to paint on the edge of the crown molding between the ceiling.       

After we put on 6 coats of paint onto the cabinets we could start getting our lives back to normal.  Meaning we could start to take all the plastic off the walls, floors, countertops etc.  The painting took 3-4 days to get all the coats in the kitchen on the cabinets, which felt like FOREVER for our kitchen to be out of commission.  But we did survive!       

Thankfully my pantry came out unscathed and un-dusty from the craziness of the kitchen painting situation.  I was glad that I had put plastic over that portion, but happy I took everything else out.  Having all my dishes and kitchen accessories in the dining room allowed me to have easy access to everything rather than peeling off the plastic every time I needed something.         

After all the plastic was gone I felt a little better and half way back to normal!  The next phase of the painting project is to put all the dishes back in the cupboards and finish painting the cabinet faces…..which feel like they are taking forever!  Check back in for more kitchen progress and happenings!

Microwave Cart/Island Inspiration

As we gear up to start making and designing our permanent microwave cart (which I want to look more like an island so from here on out it is a microwave island - are you with me?) I thought I would share some of my inspirations for the design.  You can see our temporary solution here, and even though we love it I am craving something that looks built in and customized for our kitchen.  However, I am SO GLAD we tried the temporary stand for a while because we have learned several important things:

1. We love the amount of space a bigger surface gives us as opposed to a cart that only fits the microwave.  I envision myself rolling out chickadils or pizza dough with ease and I am loving the idea of extra counter top space. 
2. The dimensions of the stand go great with the flow of the room.  The stand doesn’t look too cumbersome and we haven’t bumped into it yet – so the size is a go!
3. We want a microwave island with an open airy feel that our current one has.  We originally envisioned something closed off with tons of hidden storage but soon realized that it would make the space too heavy and weighed down and we want the space to have a nice light flow to it.

After browsing the internet for some time to hone in the style I envisioned for our new island I was inspired by these photos:

What I like about this island from Better Homes and Gardens is the rustic butcher block countertop, detailed ball feet, and open storage underneath.  Plus it is white...awesome!





This island (also from BHG) has the same white-island-with-butcher-block-countertop theme going on, but I love how the spices are stored in those great jars for easy access.  I am in love with spices - there I said it - and I eventually envision streamlined spice containers in an open storage concept like this somewhere in the kitchen. 

This island was DIYed by Dana from House Tweaking.  She is an amazing DIY designer with fabulous taste and she gives a step by step tutorial here of how she DIYed her existing island to create this lovely beauty.  Again I love the built in storage on the side of the island.

The last island I found inspiring (again from BHG - can you sense a theme?) is probably the closest design to what we will attempt to DIY.  It is open and airy, uses baskets (like our current microwave island) to add storage and has the white-island-with-butcher-block-countertops that I obviously love so much.  However, on the microwave island we are designing we are going to have two shelves (as opposed to only one in this picture) that will allow us to hang our pots and pans like on our current stand. 

Our original idea was that we would just buy the butcher block countertop from Ikea where they have great prices and dimensions that fit our vision for the stand.  However last time we ventured over to Ikea they told us that all butcher block countertops were out of stock due to a “wood shortage”…whatever that means.   Soo....we have decided to DIY the butcher block countertop.  Could this end in disaster? YES! Do I trust my hubby enough to try it? YES! We will be updating as soon as we begin our adventure.

Work With What You Got Microwave Stand

When we first toured our new home we failed to notice that the kitchen did not have a microwave.  We also didn’t notice the living room did not have a ceiling light.  Maybe we were so high on house love that we didn’t even think about those things, but after we went through the initial “oh crap where will we microwave our food” phase we learned to adjust. 

First, we set out to Target to buy a counter top microwave.  This was a big decision and we considered many factors – most importantly was “where do we see our relationship with this microwave going?”  We asked this question because we didn’t want to buy the cheapest microwave on the lot if it was going to stay in our kitchen throughout the many updates we had planned, and reversely we didn’t want to splurge on something that was only going to be there for a couple months. 

After some long hard thinking, and consideration of our kitchen layout we decided that in keeping the current cabinet setup (which we have grown to love and don’t see changing in the near future) a mounted microwave is just not an option.  Soo…our counter top microwave is here to stay!  We chose a stainless steel model because we envision updating all our appliances to stainless steel and want our little microwave to fit in.  

So then comes the next question: where do we put this thing?  Our kitchen has limited counter space and after several placements to test the waters I hated the look of every one of them and the thought of the microwave taking up precious space.  So that left one option: a microwave cart. 

We then went back to the first question we asked ourselves when we were buying the microwave “where is this relationship going” and I decided that I didn’t want to spend money on a gaudy microwave cart that I was going to hate while waiting for a permanent solution. 

I then considered what we already have in our house that could be a temporary solution.  I came up with these two matching wire shelves, from Target.  Combined these two shelves are around the same size that I want our permanent microwave stand to be which is great because I can see if I actually like the size and the way it flows with the room BEFORE we build it rather than after and having it be the spatial bane of our existence.  The kitchen also leaves a bit to be desired in the drawer space department, which explains the baskets, which are full of kitchen utensils. 

I started out with the shelves low, but soon realized that you could see…well all the junk and it didn’t look pretty.  I fixed that by moving the middle shelving units up so you can just see the great wicker baskets (which I already had from Ikea!) and not the mess.

Since I had a whole lot of empty space on the bottom of the shelves I decided that I could hang my pots and pans from the racks to create a utilitarian look.  I absolutely am in LOVE with hanging pots and pans, not only for storage, but as incentive for me to keep them sparkling clean! In our kitchen there is not enough room to hang them from the ceiling so I thought this was a great alternative – it’s all about compromise right?

After using this makeshift microwave stand I have really decided I love the design, and hope to model our permanent microwave stand (which I hope will look more like a farmhouse kitchen island) after my quick and easy DIY stand.  The best part about this was I already had all the materials to complete the project and just had to purchase S hooks to hang the pots and pans for under $3.00.  That sure beats buying a $60.00 stand that I hate!