My blue kitchen (aka why test pots exist) (and, consequently, why you should use them)
So I decided the other day that I couldn’t handle these dark/dreary/oh-my-god-who-seriously-paints-their-walls-these-colours? walls any more. With Baby on the way (only nine weeks to go till my due date) (ack!), I had sworn off painting for the next little bit (even though some say you can absolutely paint while preggers) (however I’m super sensitive to smells right now, so painting just didn’t seem to be in the cards for me.) Based on a recommendation from a co-worker (hi Laura!) I brought someone in to paint my living room, dining room, and (yay!) kitchen. It took her less than five hours to paint all three rooms. FIVE HOURS! I was (and still am) in painting-land awe. I’m not sure how she did it (seriously, what she accomplished in five hours would have taken me several weekends!) (maybe I’m just a rather pokey painter?), but suffice it to say that the house feels like a totally new house now. The rooms feel bigger and lighter and cheerier. The ceilings seem so much higher. And I am one mighty happy momma-to-be.
However, let me break in on this little newly painted room love-fest with a bit of a confession: my kitchen was supposed to be gray. A nice, light, slightly bluish airy fairly neutral gray colour.
The Coles Notes version of the story? I got blue.
Like, really blue.
Grumble.
What I was hoping for? A slightly brighter lighter version of the same colour that adorned my happy little 1940s kitchen at our last house. That kitchen was painted in Benjamin Moore’s Stonington Gray, and I loved it. Loooooved it.
Our current kitchen, in our old mauve house, gets far less natural light than our previous sunny little kitchen did. And it’s less open and needed brightening up a bit. So my seemingly obvious solution was to confidently (ie “ruthlessly skipping the whole test-pot phase of painting”) go one paint chip lighter on the same paint-swatch card thingy from my previously adored Stonington Gray colour. Seemed foolproof enough, I thought. And, even when I held the paint chip up in various places around my kitchen, my newly decided upon colour (Wickham Gray) appeared to be a light gray with a teeny tiny smidgen of blue-y green-y muddy undertones mixed in for a bit of wall colour pizazz.
The real-life post-painting result? Apparently Wickham Gray turns blue in my kitchen.
Like, very very blue.
Here’s where we started (all gold-y and dark and such):
And here’s where we are now. Blue blue blue.
Yep. Definitely blue. Super ginormous sigh.
Don’t get me wrong! There are lots of lovely blue kitchens out in the world. In fact, my Pinterest Kitchens board features several blue-hued kitchens that I’ve admired for a while. There’s this one, from House Beautiful (although I searched the House Beautiful site and couldn’t find a link directly to this particular image – sorry!):
And this super lovely kitchen featured on the Better Homes and Gardens website…
And, my favourite (pretty!), this cheery blue kitchen courtesy of… um, Pinterest source unknown. (I hate those source unknown sorta Pins, don’t you?) (If this is your kitchen, a: I want to move into your house please! and b: let me know!)
So see? I’m not at all against blue kitchens. In fact, I think blue is so fresh and pretty in a kitchen!
But… it’s not what I had planned for my kitchen. And against my currently cream coloured upper cabinets and brown-tiled backsplash and countertops the blue looks a bit… off.
I’m going to live with it for a bit. And maybe (with a little tweaking and accessorizing and such) it’ll grow on me! With Baby on the (ever nearing) (ack!) horizon, and my painting budget tapped for the time being, blue is definitely, if nothing else, better than the muddy gold colour that was there before. And, when I someday get around to painting the kitchen cabinets a whiter crisper shade of white (Benjamin Moore’s Snowfall White, my all-time favourite trim and cupboard colour, to be be exact), I think the blue might actually look quite spectacular.
But, for now… meh. At least it’s not gold.
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