Cooking Up a Facelift

See what I did there? This post is about my kitchen, and I worked the word "cooking" into the title. You're amazed by my wit, no? Yeah, that's not a cheesy title at all. Anyhoo, when I started blabbering away on this blog, I'd intended to chronicle the renos and redecorating we were doing around this place. Of course, nothing consumes your life, your thoughts and...ahem...your blog quite like parenting, so this became an outlet for my thoughts about raising humans. A house related post is long overdue so here ya go. When we bought this place, 2 years ago, the kitchen was a sore spot for me. Our previous house had a bright, open concept kitchen that was perfect for having friends over for dinner and I've been pining for my old kitchen ever since handing over the keys. Taking a step backwards in the kitchen department to gain the extra bedrooms we needed was a necessary evil. Yes, it was a compromise we had to make in order to gain some square footage but I've been hating on this kitchen since unpacking our boxes.

Let's start with the counter top. It's green. Yep, green flecked with various shades of purple. Awesome, right? I imagine that while I was running around the playground in the 6th grade, some contractor was installing this awful green counter in the house that would one day be mine. Next, the cupboards. They're pickled oak. A finish that was popular in the early 90's and can look either pinky or yellowy depending on the lighting. Suffice it to say that washed out, pinky cupboards are not my cup of tea. As if the dated cabinetry wasn't bad enough, the hardware they're topped off with looks, to me, remarkably like vaginas. I feel like I'm greeted by 31 vaginas each and every time I walk into my kitchen and, while I appreciate the ingenius design of the vagina, I don't need to surround myself with them.  Here are some "BEFORE" pics:

Before: bland and boring.

Before: The wall colour matched the pickled oak cabinetry.

Like an ink blot test, maybe I'm the only person who sees a vagina here. Maybe I need to see a psychiatrist.

After much planning and number crunching, we've decided to do a complete gut of the main floor of our house including the kitchen. Sadly, this big fat reno is still at least three years away, possibly five. Well, I can't live with pickled oak and vagina handles for another 3 years so I've decided to give the kitchen a face lift using only paint, fabric and accessories. The green countertop is staying just where it is and I've opted for a rich purple wall colour to work with the flecks of purple running through the laminate. The cabinets have been painted out in decorators white to brighten them up and the hardware has been replaced. I scored the curtain panels from Rona, for only $50. Not bad considering the big impact they deliver. Here are some "AFTER" pics:

So the budget friendly face lift doesn't improve the overall function of my shitty kitchen, but it does act as a band aid solution until I can go wielding a sledgehammer. We're gonna be blowing out some walls, baby! The whole shebang cost me about $400, not too shabby eh? I've gotta give a shout out to my mom n' dad and Tim who spent a couple of weekends slaving away on this project with me, you guys are da bomb. Peace out.

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