The Kitchen is Done

Or maybe I should title this post "The kitchen is done and has been for months...I'm just a blog slacker!" Ooops! Life is busy, what can I say?!

At any rate, my kitchen is done and I love it! We started this project in early July and I blogged about it back then. We spent the spring having an addition built onto our family room and while we loved the addition, it made our early 90s oak kitchen look even more dated than it had before. We didn't have extra money to gut the kitchen and start from scratch, so I convinced my very very VERY reluctant husband that we should paint the cabinets white. Then I convinced him that not only should we paint them white, but also add beadboard to dress them up a bit. Then I convinced him that while we were doing this project, we might as well add some trim and make them look a bit more finished.
I did a lot of research before we began this project because I knew my husband was taking a huge leap of faith and I didn't want to let him down...nor did I want to end up with streaky oakish whitish cabinets. I looked at lots and LOTS of blogs and websites, but the place that was most helpful was Infarrantly Creative. Beckie is wonderful and her cabinets are beautiful--and she was absolutely wonderful at answering my many questions!
As I mentioned six months ago (wow, that was a long time ago!) when we started this project, we started with one side of the kitchen first because we knew this wouldn't be a short project! If you want to read about the process of doing the cabinets, go back to that July post. Working mostly on the weekends, it took us three months to finish up the kitchen. It was a long, long process but totally worth it in the end. We love our "new" kitchen! It flows beautifully with our expanded family room, too!

I must also put in a plug for Benjamin Moore semi-gloss paint in Decorator White. I heart this paint. I've never used Benjamin Moore paint before and now I'm 100% a convert. It is gorgeous high quality paint that covers like a dream! LOVE it!! I painted (and yes, I mean me--my husband did the other work, but sanding and painting was my job) the entire kitchen by hand using my Purdy brush (you MUST use a good quality brush) and a can of Benjamin Moore paint. My entire kitchen got three coats of paint and I used up 1/3 of a gallon of paint. Isn't that insane?! I thought it would take 3 gallons and instead I used up 1/3 of a gallon!! My kitchen isn't a palace, but it isn't *that* small!!
Eventually we will change out all of our interior (oak...blech!) doors for white wood and change all of the trim to white as well...but it is a slow process! In the picture below you can see across the hall to our laundry room/powder room (yes, the toilet is adjacent to the dryer...it's lovely...) and see the wood trim and the wood door leading to the garage...that will all be white one of these days!
Ahhh, so pretty! I heart this kitchen makeover! Oh and those are our old laminate countertops. I carefully taped them and was able to sand, prime and paint the oak edges white. They've held up beautifully! The backsplash and the edges of the counters were oak...but not any more!

Wondering what this kitchen makeover cost?

Less than $350!

(It would have been less, but beadboard isn't cheap!)