The kitchen and other things....

The weekend following our trip to New York City we painted our kitchen cabinets. When we were looking at houses, I wasn't necessarily looking for the nicest kitchen, but I was looking for a big kitchen. When we walked into our house, I loved the kitchen and that was one of the big selling points for me. The orangy builder-grade cabinets were not really my thing, but they were in good shape, so I knew I could live with them.

Before Christmas, my in-laws painted their kitchen cabinets using General Finishes Milk Paint. By using the milk paint, they avoided having to sand all of the cabinets down to bare wood. Once I saw how beautiful their cabinets were, I knew we could take the same approach with ours. So, we reserved their assistance over President's Day weekend to help paint. The entire week before, we worked hard prepping the cabinets: taking the doors off, taking off hardware, filling holes, cleaning, and deglossing.

On Saturday, we were able to get on a coat of adhesive primer as well as two coats of antique white milk paint. If you are looking for an easy paint to work with, I would recommend this brand of milk paint. It comes pre-mixed and it goes on really smoothly, we had no problems with coverage. By Sunday afternoon, we had done a double top coat to protect the cabinets. Then, we put on all new hardware and we were done! My father-in-law was also nice enough to install bead board around the island.

Even though the cabinets aren't perfect, I'm really proud of the work that we did. The only thing that we splurged on was the hardware, which came from Restoration Hardware. Of course, it would have taken us three times as long without Adam's parents.

I know you're probably expecting to see pictures of the kitchen now, but I want to wait to show off the whole thing because we are having granite countertops installed next week! Seriously, excitement is oozing out of me right now in anticipation of these counters. So, once those are done, pictures will come!

I will, however, provide you with a picture of how we found Griffin one day when we came back from running errands: