Kitchen Reveal - I

For those of you following my blog, you'll remember I am in the process of overhauling making over our kitchen. Since my last post, I had found a color and husband and I spent a good part of our Sunday painting. He just looooooooooooooved that. 

Having weeded through the 'gray' section of just about every paint swatch known to man, I finally chose a color. I went with Gray Owl by Benjamin Moore. The woman at our local hardware store almost sold me on BM Aura, that is, until I asked the price. All I could think of was the hard budgeting needed to make that happen and to be honest, paint is paint. As long as we were covering up the existing wall color, I didn't care what kind it was. No need for the creme de la creme here. 

Benjamin Moore Gray Owl

Primer is already on there

Satin finish, by the way

 I learned that we could go to Lowe's and have our beloved Gray Owl color-matched. Oh, the joy I felt! So, I did just that. At first it was mixed too dark, then too light, but the third time was a charm and came out perfectly. I found it helpful to arm myself with the BM paint swatch so they could mark the paint on the color once it was mixed. *Note: I'm omitting the part where I finally got the can and walked away, spilling every drop onto the floor, forcing the patient worker from behind the counter to clean it up. I embarrassingly admit that as it lay on the floor, I couldn't help but think what a great color it was.

Don't mind the messy kitchen... 

Since our existing walls were not only darker, but also semi-gloss, it forced us to have to prime those babies. Keep in mind that I had to stick to budget. No budging here. I ended up getting a quart of primer (I forget the brand, but it was at Lowe's and worked fantastic at covering up those walls). Since Gray Owl was also in a quart, the added expense wasn't too big a deal. 

We seriously had to stretch every ounce of each paint can to the best of our abilities. Scraping the inside of the cans with a little paintbrush was not beyond us. In the end, it worked. Because I was going to put up the bead board wallpaper (next post), it made sense to not buy a gallon of paint only to have it left over. I also purchased low-VOC (Olympic brand) paint as it wasn't available in no-VOC... a small price to pay (literally!) for choosing Lowe's over Benjamin Moore. 

I have to say, the color is amazing and even more so against the white cabinets. Its almost like a cloud swooped in and hung around long enough to make you go 'ahhhhhhh'. Soft. Like the feel of cashmere against your skin. I can't quite describe the feeling of the room now, but there is such a difference from what it was like before. Needless to say, I love being in the kitchen even more now.