Kitchen Redo #2

Phase 1

Our kitchen is... not pretty... yeah, that's how I'll word it.  The upper cabinets are a mint green (my husband says they're blue) and the lower cabinets are an ugly brown.  I prefer rich colors.  From the first day I saw the kitchen, I knew I wanted to repaint and stain the cabinets!  Thankfully the counters are pretty decent!

Before pictures

Blue, or green? :)

I didn't want to spend a lot of money on this project, especially since this isn't our forever home and I'm going to school and not working currently, therefore we are living off just my husband's income.

Thankfully we have a TON of random opened paints.  I decided I wanted to go with a light color, possibly gray for the upper cabinets.  I found a light beige in a 5 gallon bucket that I had used to paint the walls in our old house.  I also still had the blue left over from that kitchen.  I love the look (and ease of use) of chalky paint.  I recently bought plaster of paris from Walmart for less than $5 (I think) and Chip Paint Brushes from Dollar General for $2 (for 3 different sizes!).  Today I bought a glass jar for $3 to store the mixed paint color in because I knew I wouldn't be using it all up today.

So mixing fun I had!  1 1/2 cups of beige to roughly 1/3 cup blue.  I actually used 5 Tbls of blue because I wanted to add it 1 Tbls at a time to make sure the color didn't turn too blue or too dark.

The recipe I use for chalky paint is:

2 1/2 Tbls Plaster of Paris

2 Tbls cool water

stir and mix until smooth - adding more plaster for thicker, chalkier coverage

1 cup of paint

mix all together

Because I only wanted to test one bank of cabinets to make sure I liked the color, I only wanted to mix 1/2 cup of paint.  So I only used 1 1/4 Tbls plaster and 1 Tbls of water.  After the mixture was smooth, I added 1/2 cup of my newly mixed color.

The thing I love most about chalky paint is that prep is super easy!  I took the cabinet doors off, and then the handles off the doors.  I wiped them down using a degreaser and let them dry.  On goes the first coat.  

The second coats have been applied.  I'm waiting on the doors to dry so I can flip them and do the back side.  Each coat only takes roughly 30 minutes to dry (another bonus of chalky paint).  I'm anxious to see the color tomorrow morning after it has dried and in the sunlight!