Our Kitchen Cabinet Transformation: From Gold -----> Gray!

Jennifer Allwood
by Jennifer Allwood
Transforming our house from all golds and browns to the new lighter creams and grays has been a slooooooooooooooooooooow process. But we are making headway!!! We got the kitchen cabinets PAINTED and that is major gray progress!!!
May I introduce you to our newly painted cabinets???
Our cabinets used to look like this. In my photo, the cabinets appear creamy, but they really were GOLD in real life. And the faux finish that I did on them was very outdated. I did the faux 9-10 years ago and it’s pretty safe to say that after 9-10 years, most things need a “redo” if they are going to be “current” looking. The cabinets were bugggggggggggging me to say the least.
So we decided to repaint them and I knew I wanted gray. We had recently painted all the walls in “Ellie Gray” from Sherwin Williams (a gray with some blue undertones), so the cabinet color needed to look good with that. I knew I also am drawn to more saturated, strong colors…. so a light gray wasn’t really in my DNA.


We decided to stare at the swatch of “Cityscape” from Sherwin Williams for a week or so (see above pic). And then I just had to pull the trigger. I was nervous but you get to a point where you think ANYTHING will look better than what you currently have. And I was at that point.
And then we lived like this for a week. Let me tell you that if you realllllllllllllllllllly need/want to clean out your cabinets….. just get your cabinets repainted. You basically shame yourself into purging and tidying and cleaning up 5 year old dried PB&J on the cabinets. It’s pitiful really how naked you feel with no cabinet doors. Lol. Everyone should have to go thru it at least once!
The girls who work for me at The Magic Brush painted all of my cabinets for me. THEY ARE THE BEST. When they started the color …. I freaked just a bit. I hovered between “oh my gosh, what have I done” and “this is the best color evvvvvvver in the history of colors”. Sometimes when you try a color you’ve never used before (and I’ve never used this before), you just can’t tell until the project is over.
Isn't this color dreamy???


After the kitchen was put back together, I had to figure out my handles and pulls. I knew I wanted some cupped handles but I also wanted bling. And I also wanted bigger panty door pulls, so I put them alllllllllllll in the room together and am so stinkin’ glad I did. You can find my tutorials and videos for painting cabinet HANDLES on my blog post at http://themagicbrushinc.com/painted-pantry-handles-in-my-new-gray-kitchen/
And finally the room came back together. But you know how home projects are, once you do one thing…. the snowball begins....those barstools and that tile did NOT work with my kitchen anymore.
So shortly after getting the cabinets painted, I had to ditch the tall, old-world barstools for some new, shorter ones from TJ Maxx.


And I painted my tile. I couldn’t stand the gold and copper tile with the gray cabinets. Eventually the tile and the countertops will be changed out, but while we wait on the money tree to blossom….. painted tile will do nicely. I blogged about the painted tile also at http://themagicbrushinc.com/kitchentile/ . Pretty much everything in the whole wide world is paintable!


Until then, I’m obsessed with my new gray cabinets. If you want to know our process for cabinet painting, you can head over to my blog for tutorials!
Jennifer Allwood
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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  • Linda Linda on Jan 20, 2016
    What did you do with your old stools??? I want them,😩
  • Tracie Evans Sewell Tracie Evans Sewell on Jan 20, 2016
    I love this idea! I have a couple of questions- What prep did you do before painting? Did this color make your kitchen dark? Thanks!
  • Snapoutofit Snapoutofit on Jan 20, 2016
    I like your wood floor. is it vinyl?
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