I love the color green, especially when I'm craving some springtime. Any shade will do, but bright grass green is my favorite. I would love a kitchen like this.
Also, I love those stools. Recently I went through a bit of a stool search myself, as I decided the stools I had just didn't cut it. My bar is pretty narrow, and essentially in the entryway, which like everything else in my apartment is very small. I had found two of these in black on Craigslist for a steal when I first moved in:
They worked fairly well, but were a little too big and cut off the entryway a bit. I don't have a photo of them in the space, but here is my bar when I was still moving in:
I sold them and set off to Ikea to find a replacement. It took me a little while, but I settled on these bad boys:
As to be expected, I don't have a photo of them in the entryway, but they work fantastically and I'm very happy with them. It is nice to have a back on a stool, but it really makes a big difference visually to not have it.
Photos courtesy of (1: I believe Apartment Therapy, 2 &4: Ikea, 3: Me)
So despite all the bad reviews, I will be going to see Sex and the City 2 at some point, as someone who owns all six seasons and the first movie on DVD. But I'm not expecting much. I did get a peak at the interior design in the movie on Elle Decor and had a pleasant surprise. I had run across a tile I loved in a wine shop in Rosslyn a few years ago, and here it is popping up in Carrie's kitchen! It's not the greatest picture of the tile itself, but I just love the textured look of them.
So, in an effort to finally pull my apartment together, I'm doing the Apartment Therapy Spring Cure. This week was focused on the kitchen, and so it got a deep clean and organizational frenzy, as the cupboards weren't quite arranged the way I wanted. Side note - who knew an oven could get dusty? I mean, I know I don't use it that much, but still, there was an actual layer of dust on the bottom inside my oven.
I can't get too creative with the design, as the wall below is literally the only available wall space in the whole kitchen. I tried to tie in the yellow of the living room with my tea kettle and paper towel holder, and then I pulled these three platters out of a box where they've lived for several years and hung them on the wall.
One of the things to do weekly in the Cure is to buy fresh flowers - this week was daffodils!
And onto one of my projects that's been hanging over my head - the gallery wall. After much debate, my orderly engineer side won out and I went with a geometric layout. I was planning on getting some of my photos printed for this, but I had some of my mural photos printed that I had never framed, so I went with those instead. These have a bit of a long history for me, and it's only taken about 3 years for me to decide I wanted them on my wall to get them up there. :)
The feature piece, my Christmas present from boyfriend, is a photo collage that has yet to be framed (it's the large square one on the floor), but the rest of them are hung up and look good (if I do say so myself). I'm anticipating it will grow, but these are just all the random frames/photos/artwork I had laying around.
Update on other random apartment projects - we actually managed to get a little bit of work done on the loft bed last weekend, that is, until the circular saw battery ran out and we realized the extra battery and charger were at boyfriend's house. I have high hopes of getting stuff done this weekend, but we'll see. :) The gorgeous weather we've been having means we can actually work outside, so that is a definite plus. Stay tuned for more updates!
So I still haven't given up my dreams to redo my kitchen, although anything has yet to take place. I'm very attracted to this shiny countertop though, very pretty.
I've professed my love for concrete counter tops before, but today I saw something that may make me sway another direction. On a house tour on Apartment Therapy, there are these gorgeous white marble counter tops, and I just can't get enough of them. Which do you prefer - concrete or white marble?
So I was discussing how I eventually want concrete counter-tops in my future home with boyfriend this weekend, and lo and behold, there is a post on Apartment Therapy about them today! They are a really strong, durable, and fairly cheap option for counter-tops, all good things in my book. What do you think?
So I guess I left you all hanging on the kitchen, but I've been a little consumed with Small Cool fever this week. I'm a little disappointed in how things are turning out, as they are not capping the entries at 40, as the rules state, because they got so many entries at the end of the submission period. If they would have stopped at 40, I would have ended up at 8th place, which would have been a pretty much optimal position for the bracket, as I would have been the entry with the most votes in the bottom bracket. But alas, I'm currently in 9th, which is the worst position (I go against the first place entry), and there is one more day of entries. Oh well, I had a good run, and I'm impressed I did as well as I did.
But I digress from kitchen talk. It's all up in the air once again as to what I will do with the kitchen, surprise, surprise. I was talking with a friend last week, and it turns out there is the possibility of renting a row house with her and one of her other friends, which would be cheaper and the timing would be perfect. So if I do that, I'll leave the fugly kitchen for the next tenant to deal with, seeing as how I don't want to do a lot of work on the kitchen and move in four months. But, while I was at the top of my game in the Small Cool competition, boyfriend and I were scheming as to how we could improve the appearance of the kitchen for future pictures, as it really is the downfall of my apartment. Oh, the finalists get to submit 10 new pictures, so that's why we were thinking this. We had a few ideas, and I think they would work out really well, without even having to get permission. So here goes:
Appliances - can't really do anything without expense/permission, so they have to stay.
Cupboards - kind of the same boat as the appliances, but I could paint. I also had a brilliant idea to hide at least a few of them. I don't use the bottom cupboards a ton, as they house my pots and pans (I don't cook that often) and cleaning supplies (ditto). I could figure out a way to attach a skirt to the bottom of the countertop, in a neutral shade, to hide some of the nastiness, similar to what I did in the bathroom (glue guns work wonders).
Backsplash - As the third of the most hideous elements of my kitchen, I think I could locate some sort of sheet of metal/something that I could just temporarily prop up/attach to the wall to hide the blue/white wallpaper. This could potentially still be the pressed tin that I had suggested previously.
Walls - I had a brilliant thought regarding the walls. There are 2 full gallons of the wall color paint stored in the kitchen cabinets. I could totally just paint it for now and then repaint when I leave. Granted, it's a lot of work for 4 months of painted walls, but if it got me the competition championship, it would have been worth it.
So there you have it - a few non-committal options for updating a kitchen enough for pictures. I had a lot of fun brainstorming different ideas for the kitchen, so stay tuned, as this may become a regular feature!
The voting is still open for the Turquoise kitchen color scheme, but I'm throwing another option in the mix! Because the rest of my apartment is full of reds, yellows, and pinks, I am leaning towards a cooler color for the kitchen, but at the same time, I don't want to overwhelm my small apartment with color. I'm afraid it might be too much to throw a bunch more teal and turquoise in the kitchen, so I went searching for some more tame alternatives to cooling down the apartment color level. I found these two from Living, etc., and really like the mix of cream, silver, and weathered wood floors, but that introduced a whole other level of kitchen reno in a rental - redoing the floors.
I only came up with one option for this color scheme, which utilizes the tin backsplash, the cream painted cupboards, and the stainless appliances. Obviously, this would work as well with the existing floors, but I definitely like the looks of the wood floor better. I did a little price checking, and I can get laminated flooring from Ikea for $50-$100, depending on how picky I am about the color.
I figured I would throw some of the popular configurations from yesterday in the mix, and see what people are feeling like today! As usual, let me know what you think and any suggestions are more than welcome!
Thanks for voting and stay tuned for more kitchen design!
So I have two votes for white appliances, two votes for silver appliances, and two votes for "other", whatever that means. No one seems to like black, which I find interesting. So I'm no closer to deciding what I would like for my appliances. Over the weekend, I thought I should revamp my approach, and scour my house books for pictures that had an overall feel of what I wanted. Seeing as how I don't know what I want, it turned out to not be as productive as I had hoped, but there were a couple of options.
The first option that I found in my house books is a color scheme based on a turquoise, ivory, yellow, anything in that sort of family. The picture below is a couple of pages from my house book on the kitchen floor.
In order to translate this into my kitchen, I'm thinking of keeping the walls ivory, painting the cupboards a turquoise color, and accenting with yellows and creams. For the backsplash, there are two different treatments that I'm thinking of. One treatment that I like a lot is a pressed tin backsplash. It's cheaper than tile, and is quite easy to install, so I think it's a good option. I can go either with a silver color, or it could be painted, but I'm leaning towards silver. The second treatment would be a subway tile backsplash, in a turquoise color.
For the pressed tin backsplash, I've done two mock-ups (don't laugh at my paint skills), for the different appliance options. The first one is leaving them the way they are, to mimic white, and second one with stainless steel, which I think maybe is a bit much with the backsplash. In this case, it might be nice to paint the backsplash to match the walls, which are a creamy color. It's hard to tell in the picture, because of the cool lighting, but the overall coloring of the kitchen currently is a warm, creamish color, which fits much better with the house book pictures above.
The other option is to paint the cupboards a creamy color to match the walls, and then have a turquoise tile backsplash, as shown below in 3 different variations.
So this is a first cut at a kitchen revamp that could potentially be done in a rental, for low cost. Obviously, the kitchen appliances are a big investment, but as I said before, I think they need to be replaced and that would be a landlord sort of issue. Estimating on the high side, the rest of the cost breakdown:
Primer and paint for cupboards ~ $50 Pressed tin backsplash or tile backsplash ~ $50
So there you have it folks, my first attempt, with five different options. Let me know which one you like best!
Any thoughts, suggestions, improvements? I have at least one more idea/color scheme up my sleeve, so stay tuned for that next!
So now that I've outlined what I currently have, I'm going to get right into what I would change in my kitchen. Before that though, I found out yesterday that my apartment really has not been updated at all for 45 years. I was looking to see if any condos in my building were for sale, and one was, the ad for which stated it had been owned by the same owner since 1965 (the building was built in 1964). The pictures showed the identical kitchen cabinets, sink, counter, bathroom vanity, medicine cabinet, pink tile, you name it. Although they did replace the fridge and stove, which I'm beginning to think mine are still from 1964. I think I have a little ammo now if I want to convince my landlord she should redo the kitchen.
I think the place to start with the kitchen is the appliances. They are the most major and costly element and can set the tone for the entire kitchen. There are two basic options here, either replacing or refinishing in some way. In my opinion, especially if they are 45 years old, they need to be replaced. I don't think either of them work very well at all, and I think this is my best bet. I did a little checking, and the minimum I could get a new fridge and stove for would be around $700, so I don't know how my landlord will feel about that. So my backup plan is to refinish them. I did a little research and there are a couple of different ways this can be accomplished. I will just stick to the basics, but it is possible to be creative here, as I've posted before.
Option 1 is to paint with appliance paint. This one is ideal, as there aren't a lot of options that work with a range top, but it is possible to get heat resistant appliance paint. This can be messy and time consuming, and given my attention to detail, especially when painting, may not be the best for me. It's nice though because it gives a wide range of color and finish options. This is fairly inexpensive and I could probably do the whole project for under $50.
Option 2 is a variation on the painting, and involves liquid stainless steel. This is basically resin with tiny particles of stainless steel in it, and it seems like a good product, but I think it's pretty apparent it's not really stainless steel in the zoomed out picture. I'm not entirely sure I want to go with stainless steel anyway, but I'll keep it on the list. It would be a little more expensive than the appliance paint, but still reasonable.
Option 3 also involves the stainless steel look, but it's really a contact paper type solution called SoftMetal Faux Stainless Steel Film. I was really impressed with the pictures on the website, so I ordered a sample sheet of it to see what it looks like in person. It is probably the most expensive option of the 3, but still well under $100 to redo both the fridge and the stove. The issue with this option though, is that it is heat resistant enough to cover the front of the oven, but not for the range top, so the top of the stove would still be hideously almond-colored. I would have to do some soft of combination here with the appliance paint or the liquid stainless steel. Another cool thing about the film is that it is essentially mess-free, and bends around surfaces easily. If I went this route, I would probably recover the counter-top as well with this material.
Here is a better picture of the floor, which is my limiting factor. It definitely has a warm tone to it, which is what makes me hesitant about bringing in the cool-colored stainless steel.
So there you have it folks, the many options for my fridge and stove. Ideally, I will be able to replace them, but even then I have to decide what I want them to look like. Seeing as how the floor is the one element I want to keep, I want it to blend as best as possible with that, and I'm not sure how I feel about the stainless look with the floor. Seeing as how my usual indecision is coming through, I decided to put the decision to my readers, so please let me know what you think in the poll!
*If you pick other, please leave a comment saying what you think.
Stay tuned next time around for the cabinet options!
I have an ugly kitchen. I know everyone who rents says that, and they really aren't that bad, but still. It's not me at all. Kitchens can be especially difficult if you rent, as most of the things have to be done by the owner. I actually have probably a better chance of actually changing the kitchen though, as I rent a condo from a single owner, rather than renting an apartment with a management company and rules, and all that. I'm currently debating moving though when my lease is up in September, so for the time being, I'm going to plan my dream kitchen in my head and leave it alone, at least until I decide if I want to stay or not. As I'm still searching for my new design buddy, the blog will be my new outlet for musing about different options. I'll start off by listing off what the before conditions are, along with any constraints.
Current Kitchen Design
Size - 8'x8' (approximately, I need to remeasure).
Paint color - Cream (swiss coffee to be exact), which matches the rest of the apartment.
Cupboards - Country style, reddish-brown stain, crappy condition.
Appliances - Almond finish, poor working condition (vent doesn't work, oven is temperamental, and the fridge does weird things to my food).
Backsplash - Blue and white fake-tiled wallpaper.
Countertop - White with gold flecks laminate, metal-edged, which is only one foot wide. To mitigate the counter space crisis, I've also purchased a butcherblock storage unit that is unfinished natural wood. This is also to be considered in the final design.
As far as the color scheme goes, I've never really used blue before in design. It's odd to say, but I don't think my mom ever did either, so it's just something I've grown up without. I have taken advantage of the blue though, and brought out my Delft china. This is one thing that I would love to continue to be able to display, as it's meaningful to me, but I'm not sure what to do if I get rid of the blue.
As far as constraints go, I think the main things that I don't mind too terribly are the floor, despite it being a cheapo solution, and the wall color. I'm usually more of a fan of pure white rather than cream, but it's a generic apartment solution to paint the whole place the same color, so it's fine.
So there you go, folks! A pseudo-blank slate that I will be working through the design for over the next couple of days. Again, I'm not sure how much of it all will be feasible, but I have a few ideas up my sleeve as to what I can do to liven it up. Stay tuned for more!
Also, I love those stools. Recently I went through a bit of a stool search myself, as I decided the stools I had just didn't cut it. My bar is pretty narrow, and essentially in the entryway, which like everything else in my apartment is very small. I had found two of these in black on Craigslist for a steal when I first moved in:
