My Kitchen

My kitchen is… well, let’s just say my kitchen needs work.  It is original to the house, which was built in 1964.  The kitchen, dining room, and some other areas of the house are a natural ash.  It is a very unique look; I’ve never seen any quite like it.  It is not what I would have chosen had I had been the one doing the choosing, but over the years, I grew to love it.  There have been too many of those years though and the time has really come to paint over the whole thing over.  And replace the cabinets.  And the counter.  Unfortunately, I am not really in a position to do so.

Between financial concerns and disability issues, I really can’t do a lot to it right now.  Replacing the cabinets is just not a feasible option, but I would love to paint them.  We have talked about maybe just painting the cabinet doors and drawers fronts.  I think that would be a significant improvement.  I think I might like the two tone, paint against wood effect.  I don’t think the cost for doing that would not be too prohibitive.  The biggest concern is the actual doing it part.  There has been talk of some of my daughter’s friends helping, but trying to coordinate everyone’s busy schedules is not easy, so it has been on the back burner, so to speak.

Lovely, isn't it? 
(As you can see I used all of my HGTV learned expertise to carefully stage this shot. 
Oh wait, never mind, this is in the "keeping it real" category.")

On the upside, all of my real burners work.  ;)  When my cook top went down to one working burner – a small one in the back, at that – we bit the bullet and replaced it last year.  I kinda love it now.  We have actually replaced all of the appliances (except the vent-a-hood) in about the last five years, so we are in pretty good shape there.  The main kitchen issues are the cabinets and the countertops.



       

         Here is the cook top, in all her shiny new glory.



 We replaced several of the appliances in 2006, when were doing repairs after Hurricane Rita.  When I was choosing what I wanted, I considered stainless, but everything I read at the time said the stainless trend was on its way out.  Ha!  So I went ahead and went with Almond/Bisque/whatever they call that color these days.  Which I like, but I am always annoyed when I am watching HGTV (I love me some HGTV) and they diss anything that is not stainless.  Oh well.

The counter is, well, let’s just say, the counter makes the cabinets look pretty good.  White Formica, circa 1964.  It has 47 years of nicks, scratches, and wear and several bad spots.  Not pretty.  I have looked at a number of online tutorials on painting countertops, but I am concerned about durability.  Some of them look pretty good, but if it didn’t hold up, would I have just made the problem worse than ever?  There is even at least one countertop paint “kit” sort of thing you can buy, but I have read it takes days to dry and has a very strong odor.  What would we do in the meantime?  Would the cats get up and walk across the wet counter and leave paw prints and fur in the finish?  (They aren’t allowed on the counter, but they believe that rule to be ridiculous and do not always comply with such silly human requests.)



You can see a bit of the nicks and scratches in this shot. 
This is, by far, not the worst spot on the counter.



And then there is always that Gulf Coast thing, where we have to decide, “Hmmmm, do I want to repaint now, or should I just wait until after the next hurricane and see whether we need a remodel anyway…?” 

So, I work with what I have, and cutesy it up all I can, and just try to kinda turn a blind eye to the rest until I am able to do something about it.  But who knows, maybe one of these days you will get to read blog posts chronicling my kitchen transformation.  Let’s hope!