My Kitchen Story

We have been living with this kitchen for almost 19 years. It is a wonderful spacious kitchen and what it lacks in cupboards it makes up for in space.

Over the years we’ve changed a few things in the kitchen. This included a new worktop, the handles on the cupboard doors, painting, a new sink, cupboards and some other smaller things.

Nowadays a kitchen is definitely not only used for food preparation and cooking anymore. It has become a space where so much more happens. The hub of the house. In our house it is easily the place where we gather the most, to chat, to eat, to do homework or play boardgames. It houses a lovely oak dining table that can seat eight or more. Currently we have six chairs around the table, which makes for spacious sitting.

For some years now, the cupboards become a bit long in the tooth, so I was thinking of reconditioning the kitchen. Mainly the cupboards. A new kitchen was totally out of the budget, so I decided to change the colour of the existing cupboards and make some decorative changes.

To start I bought many sample pots of different brands and colours to make sure I would really love the colour. That I would enjoy living with the new colour. I tried many; shades of cream, white, grey, blue. In the end I fell in love with Colourtrend’s Peacock Blue for interior woods for the bottom cupboards, a deep unique blue. I kept the door handles and actually this time it stands out so much more than when it was on the original wooden door.

I cannot stress this enough, but whenever you do any recondition, recycling or upcycling project, preparation is key. It is a tedious job, I know I’ve done enough of them, but the results are worth it. If you skip on the preparation, the finish might not be as smooth and/or worse the new beautiful paint might start to peel. Clean it, remove old paint and grease, sand the wood, clean with a damp cloth again and then put on the primer or undercoat. Lightly sand it when the primer is dry to make sure it feels smooth and be careful to apply coats of paint in thin even layers.

After that paint two or sometimes three coats of the colour of your choice. I used a paint sprayer for the cupboard doors and did the rest with a small foam paint roller to get that lovely velvety finish.

For the top cupboards I used Dulux Satinwood Orchid White for interior wood. The glass had to be totally covered because I couldn’t manage to remove it without damaging the door. The idea was to make the cupboards more part of the wall using the same colour that was used on the walls.

When we went into lockdown (Covid-19) in Ireland, many families had to rearrange their interiors to make room for students and/or family members working from home. In our case our student daughters came back home for online classes. This in effect meant a rearrangement of furniture in different rooms to accommodate for the above. A rug landed in our kitchen and I actually really liked the idea, nice underfoot – especially when winter comes again – and also aesthetically pleasing. Now the kitchen features a permanent rug: this kelim is from Caseys furniture.