Kristen Loves Design

Oh paint color. It’s the hardest thing to choose when you’re making over a room, right? Generally, I’ve been very happy with the colors we chose in this house, but oh my, the bathroom color (it’s the same in both) is not only not my favorite, it is not really the color I picked out. Let me back up here a minute. So when we bought our house in 2005, we very carefully chose several nice and neutral shades of taupe for the builder to use. Of course what they didn’t tell us was that all the paint was in a Flat finish and that they would water down the colors and more than likely only spray one coat. So what we essentially got was an entire house of colors (builder-basic-brown) we didn’t really like (and didn’t pick) with paint that was impossible to touch-up in addition to the fact that if you tried to wipe down a spot, the paint would come right off. So of course since then, we have been slowly painting each room with different paint. We had been using Benjamin Moore in mostly the Pottery Barn colors (until now). Let me just say, we’ve never been super happy with this paint at all, but sometimes it’s better to just keep using what you know, right? Anyway, because the existing wall colors are very light and neutral on our walls, we’ve just been painting right on top of the initial paint, kind of treating it like a primer coat. In all the rooms we’ve been successful, except the bathrooms. The bathrooms are almost neon blue (maybe we could say it looks “tropical”?), not quite the color I was thinking. Clearly there was a conflict between the color we chose and the existing color we painted over!

I say all this to say that after waiting this long to makeover the kitchen, I was definitely not going to take a chance with the Kitchen. Not only did I tape up many, many color cards for weeks to look at them in different light, I then brought home 4 sample pots of the colors that were our final choices and I painted squares on the wall. And then we stared at those squares for weeks, eventually eliminating 2 of the colors, and then finally choosing The One.

Just so many choices.
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Down to the top 4 (the top 2 on the left and the top 2 on the right).
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The top 4 colors painted on the wall from sample pots (with bonus Dixie cat surveying the scene)!
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The top choice (the second runner up was the color below this one in the previous picture – you’ll notice that the counter tops have been upgraded in the meantime).
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The One.
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Here’s a spoiler – we LOVE the color (Behr Stone Fence in Satin finish). It’s perfect – exactly what I wanted, a nice rich blue-gray. Not too blue (a color we have in our bedroom and the bathrooms), not too gray (a color we have in the office), and also in a medium tone, to match all of the paint in the rest of the house. Oh and I should add, we went with plain ole’ Behr from the Home Depot in Satin finish, since that’s what our contractor recommended. And we are just so impressed. And you can touch it up without any issues – so happy with it!

Next up was deciding what to do with our “window” pass-through between the Living Room and the Kitchen. A little back story about this window. When we were buying the house (there were no interior walls yet), the women who helped us choose all the finishings mentioned she thought it would be cool if a window was cut through the wall, because even though the house had an open floorplan, she thought the kitchen seemed very closed off. She was 100% right and it was one of the best decisions we ever made. However, by the time she coordinated with the builder to create the window, they had already put up the entire wall. In a move I can only describe as less-than-brilliant, they cut the hole for the window too short. So instead of re-sheet rocking it, they patched it. While the window itself was fine, the inside of the window (that you look at every time you open the refrigerator) was obviously poorly patched and that bothered us every day! The same woman who helped us had also mentioned the idea of a bar top for the window in the same material as the counter tops (laminate). It was a great idea and we did use it here and there as a bar with chairs throughout the years, but the bar top wasn’t wide enough (it was the standard amount at the time, but now bar tops are much wider), so it was kind of uncomfortable to sit at, plus because of our very large U-shaped couch in the Living Room (that we needed when all of the kids were younger, since there were often 6 of us hanging out there together), the bar seating was kind of close to the couch and made walking in between kind of tight. So we decided to hire someone to fix the sheet rock after we took off the bar top, and figured while he was here, maybe he could also extend the wall by the refrigerator (essentially making the window smaller) so that when you stand in the Living Room you can’t see the refrigerator door (of course in hindsight we should have purchased counter-depth appliances, although at the time they were less popular and really expensive).

The newly-patched window – it hides the refrigerator nicely!
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The newly-patched window from the Living Room – it doesn’t seem that much smaller.
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The finished window with a new coat of the Living Room paint.
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So it turns out, the contractor we hired to initially fix the sheet rock and extend the window was fantastic and was an expert in lots of other things. So as I continue to talk about the makeover, you’ll read more about all the other projects he worked on too! Sure it was a little more money than we had planned on spending, but on the other hand, seeing him work through the items on our list, we were kind of crazy to think we had the ability/time/wherewithal to do everything ourselves anyway!

So Lesson #4 (Part 1) is - make sure you take plenty of time to choose a paint color and look at that color by painting a sample on the actual wall and then viewing it at different times during the day. And Lesson #4 (Part 2) is – be open to admitting that you can’t do it all and hiring help.

Stay tuned for lighting decisions!

Want to read about our kitchen makeover from the beginning? Start here!

So this might be the most boring title I’ve ever come up with, but honestly, that’s what I’m going to write about this time. Also a (sort of) funny store that involves one of our adorable cats, Dixie.

So when we bought our house in 2005 and looked at one of the model homes (not the same floor plan), the kitchen had an odd white ceramic sink. It looked very much like a bathroom sink to me at the time. So when we were asked to choose all the finishing touches and we got to the kitchen, once I said I wanted satin nickel on everything, I was told there would actually be gold lettering on the label of the white sink. Ugh, the white sink! I was told there was a stainless steel option available instead, so we of course took the credit and went with that option. Not funny yet, right? Well here it comes.

So once the house was finished, we were left with indeed a stainless steel sink, but a double sink (at least the white one had been a single sink, which is what I wanted), and it was rather, shallow. Of course we thought we were just imagining it and never said anything. Over the years, using the sink was almost impossible, and it became a game to see if you could avoid wearing water while washing anything (you couldn’t). Once we hit 2008, we got our wonderful cats. Now I’ve described these little sweet creatures before, and this time, Dixie was up to her usual tricks of becoming obsessed by something strange. In this case, she became completely enamored with the rubber gasket in the sink drain of the garbage disposal. Night after night, we would wake to clanking sounds (her collar against the metal sink) and then in the morning we find the disgusting rubber gasket in the middle of the kitchen floor. After doing this many more times (even after we started leaving the stopper in the sink at night), the rubber gasket was bent so poorly out of shape that it no longer fit the drain. And here is the punchline. We searched in every hardware store (seemingly on the planet) to find a replacement. My wonderful husband finally found one online. On a site that specialized in replacement parts for mobile homes. Yes, we had the same sink as most mobile homes have. So, there you have it. To say that we were anticipating the joy of picking out a new sink, faucet, and garbage disposal is to say the least.

So when we where at Home Depot finalizing the countertops, we decided to pick everything else out then too since there was a 10% off sale and 0% financing. Unfortunately, it was on a Sunday, the sale was only until 5, and the lady we were scheduling everything with had only1 appointment available at the end of the day. And did I mention that the moon must have been full because we were supposed to pick kids up/drop kids off/run around like crazy people all day because there were kids with plans we couldn’t change. Basically we had to be in two places at once. And we only have 1 car. So after waiting 7 years to upgrade our kitchen, we picked out these items from what was on display, was in-stock, and what we could determine would look good in about I would say, 20 minutes. We were running up and down the aisles like Supermarket Sweep. Of course once we picked out everything I later did research online and I decided that even in less of a hurry I would have picked the exact same items.

First, the sink is a single bowl (yeah!) that is stainless steel and it is so deep it feels like you could take a bath in it. It’s the Revere Undermount Stainless Steel sink and even though it’s 8 inches deep, it’s just perfect (of course that makes me wonder, was our existing sink 4 inches deep? I think it was). Next up was the faucet. I really wanted a sprayer, but I also wanted to drill as few holes in the granite as possible, and when we saw this Moen Single Handle Pull-Down faucet (with matching soap pump!) I was sold. It had all the features I wanted, and stylistically had a nice clean, modern look I was going for, but not too modern. Oh and it could be installed without the apron (the flat metal piece under the faucet), so it would look very contemporary and you would still be able to see the granite around the faucet itself (which was very important because the sink is more or less right up against the wall/window). And then of course the garbage disposal. I’m not sure what to say here, other than the one we had before had very little horsepower and was ridiculously loud, no surprise. So we chose the Evolution Compact 3/4 Continuous Feed garbage disposal. It seemed a solid choice (powerful, compact since we have very little space under the cabinet, and quiet enough).

And what’s the “more” from my title? Well we drink a lot of filtered water (we have it accessible from the refrigerator) but I hate drinking cold water (it hurts my teeth) and trying to fill a pot several times a day to boil for water for our French press (we drink a lot of coffee!) was sometimes more of a comedy routine than either one of us wanted to participate in (especially first thing in the morning). So, we actually got a filtered water dispenser! We looked into getting an instant-hot dispenser too, but it was a little too complicated, too expensive, it would have been a tight squeeze under the cabinet. Besides, we were a little concerned about resale if someone bought our house who had kids or pets who might accidentally turn the faucet on. So, we chose the GE Kitchen and Bath Filtration System with the Glacier Bay Single-Handle faucet that had a similar look and feel to the Moen faucet. They aren’t identical, but my theory was that since they wouldn’t be exactly side-by-side, they should look just fine together.

So after more than 1,000 words on this subject, would you like to see some pictures? I sure would – enjoy!

Look how deep that sink is!
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A closer look.
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And the final (although ignore the spotty sink – we’re still under construction!)
Image by Kristen for Kristen Loves Design

Oh and Lesson #3 is – once you’ve planned what you would like to see in your final design, it can make choosing the details ultimately a lot quicker!

Stay tuned for how we finally decided on a paint color and also why we made the “window” with the bar top slightly smaller (and removed the bar top too!)