Kitchen paint– failures, flops, and finished

I was all excited to paint my kitchen. I bought paint that I thought would work and got right to it.

Unfortunately, the lighter of the two colors (called cucumber something) just looked like hospital green,

And the darker of the two colors (called gumdrop) I liked at first, but after painting all day, wasn’t so sure.

It was just too….. Bright Kermit the frog green. Too…something. While I like that color and it makes me happy on it’s own, with the hickory cabinets, it was just too much. I put a picture up on facebook and commented that I wasn’t sure about it, and got many comments. Many more comments than I wanted. It’s not THAT bad, folks. But, that prompted me to figure out what color it should be, and to repaint it even though I had spent a whole Saturday painting already.

So, I searched the internet for greens, earthy greens, greens that go with hickory cabinets, etc. I even tried the gold paint that I have in the front room, thinking that might look good. It didn’t.

For someone who can usually pick a paint color pretty easily (and I scoffed at my neighbor who has repainted her kitchen 3 times and had painters tape up for months. How cocky I was. No more), it was frustrating to not be able to paint. And I had kind of lost my confidence. I finally ended up on the shirwin williams paint site, and uploaded the picture of the bad green paint behind the stove and used their little program to visualize how different colors would look there. It’s hard to get a good shot of the kitchen, so many shadows from cabinets, etc, but I finally thought I had found something. I went to the hardware store and had them make up two samples for me.

Oh, yeah, that looks good…. NOT.

I tried in a different spot.

I decided to go with the lighter of the two samples, which, turns out, was called “Bengal Grass” (only someone who knows my high school mascot would realize how awesome that name is), and went and bought a gallon in semi-gloss. Thankfully, since I had already done the scrubbing, the taping, and taking off the plug covers, it went pretty fast to cover up that bright green with the darker, more earthy green.

But then I had to start on the wall above the upper cabinets. Climbing, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning (who cleans up there? NOBODY, that’s who!), climbing back down…ick. And so exhausting! Kind of frustrating that it took me so long to paint up there, plus, there were some spots in the corners that I didn’t know how I was going to paint. Need longer arms.

I got a lot done the day that Megan got out of school by 10 am or something. There I was, up on a ladder, and she agreed to help me. SO much easier with another person to hand you things, joke with, and who actually paints.

Oh, and she fits back behind the fridge better than I do, too.

I got most of it done that day, but was still frustrated about the parts I couldn’t reach, even with a ladder. When I came home from an extra bell rehearsal last Saturday, I was surprised to see that Ryan had finished off those difficult parts for me! Hooray! He said he ended up sitting ON the fridge to get that top corner spot.

I’ve been meaning to post a great picture of the finished room, but it turns out my kitchen is clean for about 2 seconds and then it’s a disaster again. Plus the lighting is not great in there, with just the one window over the sink, and I haven’t gotten a great picture that shows off how nice it looks (at least I think it’s nice, and since I’m the one who does the cooking in there, it’s my vote that matters the most, right?), but these will have to do.

I’m happy with the color. I’d better be, because I don’t anticipate that I will be wanting to do that again real soon.