Re-thinking the kitchen

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. It was a fun one for us - lots of family, lots of good meals and quality time. But I have to admit that I'm ready to get back to our routine and as with years past, I am so ready to take down the holiday decorations and get our house back to normal.  While spring and outside projects (painting! gardening!) are right around the corner, we still have a couple months of cold to trudge through. Aside from getting quotes on said outside projects, I am also focusing on a few interior projects over the next few months.  My big project is giving our kitchen a face lift.  If you follow me on social media you may have seen photos of my kitchen and thoughts on both cabinet paint color and hardware.  As a bit of a refresher, here is what the kitchen looked like before we moved in.

Here is what it looked like after we painted.

My main objective is to make the kitchen more useable and aesthetically interesting on a tight budget until I can do a larger scale renovation (including opening up the kitchen to the family room) 5-10 years down the line.  I have already added a farmhouse style island table that has made the kitchen way more useable.

Next steps are to paint the cabinets, replace the hardware, lighting and faucet and do a fun stencil on the floors.  Originally my thoughts veered in this direction.

But then I got sort of tired of the idea of white cabinets (which we had in our old house).  I had entertained a dark charcoal grey for the cabinets but realized that it was really competing with the black/brown speckled granite counters (not my favorites). Here is a photo of the test paint color and me testing some hardware options on a cabinet panel.

I then went back to the idea of white but still wasn't too happy with it.  That is when I came upon this concept image from Jenny Komenda.

I love the sage green. It feels modern yet classic. And I think the green counterbalances the red in the granite (sort of like how you use green concealer on a pimple).  I'm hoping it will make the counters appear more black than speckled brown.  I am going to do the uppers in white still and use some new hardware from my collection.  I also found these great barn lights that I think will spread the light out better toward the corners of the kitchen and plan to use a blackened metal finish on the hardware.

Its so funny - I went through so many iterations of kitchen cabinet colors and concepts but none of them feltquite right.  This one feels fresh and in keeping with the house.  It's nice to finally have a cohesive vistion. I can't wait to go paint shopping on Friday and get started on the project next week. Wish me luck!!!