The Kitchen Gets a Facelift… Like a Clown

Earlier this year, I became quite unimpressed with our kitchen.  The walls, which were still a flat construction white color, had become super dingy.  They wouldn’t clean well and were only getting worse with time and cooking.  I kept telling Casey I wanted to paint, but he insisted we wait and do a tile backsplash, something I thought was too high cost.

So in mid-June, when he went away to Philly for training for four days, I took matters (and a paintbrush) into my own hands.

First a base coat of the color that’s in the rest of our main living space.  Just this step made things SO MUCH BETTER.

Then I chose a pattern color, pulled from a painting I love that hangs in the kitchen.  After that, there was some trial and error to create a pattern on the wall.  I was going to use a stencil, but the paint lines weren’t crisp and clean enough.  So I decided to do a little inspiration search online to find a pattern I could tape off fairly easily.

I chose an octagon pattern, which involved taping squares and then taping the corners of each square to create octagons.  This may seem like a huge process, but really it just involved taping a bunch of horizontal and vertical lines and then taping corners using a template I made.  Way better than painting a stencil, moving the stencil, setting it up just right, painting, and repeat.

I went through some more trial and error when it came to getting the paint not to bleed.  Apparently you have to buy the super fancy painter’s tape for really good lines, which I did not know.  I do know, though, how to do research online and I found a way that worked amazingly… and no, it was not buying more expensive painter’s tape.

TIP:  Paint over the entire surface with the base color first.  That will seal the tape edges.  Then paint with your pattern color.  I know this may seem like a lot of extra work, but it really wasn’t.  It was two coats of quick painting (separated by plenty of drying time since they were different colors) verses cutting in EVERY SINGLE OCTAGON and then going over that to make it dark enough.

So, by the time Casey got home from training, I had all of the octagons done (except for behind the fridge).  I thought it was looking excellent and thankfully, Casey didn’t hate it.  I believe his actual words were, “It’s not as awful as I expected.”

Awesome.

Then came part two.  Multi-colored squares in the big blank spaces at the corners of the octagons.  I thought it added a lot to the pattern, great texture, and in a way that almost mimics tile.

Casey, on the other hand, thinks it looks like a clown.  I’m not exactly sure what he means by that, but it’s also how he vented about some knobs I recently painted for a dresser.  I guess he’s really just not a fan of color.

Oh well, I know I can’t win them all with him, and I am definitely a fan of color, so I love the “new” kitchen.  It is much more vibrant and inviting, and it makes me smile to walk in there and see the project completed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Do It Yourself ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Supplies for the base and pattern:  I used leftover paint for the base color, but a quart would be more than enough, which is the amount I got of the coral color.  Paint brush and small roller (I used two roller brushes: one for the base color and one for the coral color).  Painter’s tape.  Level.  Pencil.  A sweet baby who can spend chunks of time entertaining himself.

Supplies for the multi-color squares: small craft paintbrush, basic acrylic paints in various colors, a steady hand and the ability to paint a square without taping… unless you want to do a bunch more taping, which I did not.  I also tried a sponge technique, which creates a texture some people might be okay with, but it wasn’t the look I was going for.

Follow (basically) the steps above, hopefully with less trial and error, and voila, a cheerful kitchen filled with the joy of a circus.