Painted Detail on My Kitchen Island

Last weekend was perfect. Mother's Day was lovely - Michael and the girls surprised me with a necklace I've been eying for a while and a gorgeous bunch of peonies.

The arrangement was so pretty that I thought it was a good excuse to break out the camera and take some 'after shots' of my kitchen island that I've been meaning to share with you.

This old dresser was one of the very first things Michael and I bought as a married couple. We got it for almost nothing at a thrift store in Arizona. It's been about 20 different colors over the years and the hardware's changed a half dozen times. The top hutch piece was some I picked up a few years later at the Crate and Barrel outlet.

When we moved into our new apartment, I knew I wanted to add an island to our kitchen to provide more counter space and to separate the cooking/prep area from the dining, but I didn't think I wanted to use this dresser. I mean, look at the back of the thing. It was in bad shape. This is right after we moved in last September.

Call me sentimental (or cheap), but I thought I'd at least give the dresser a run as a possible island, so I pulled off the old back.

I got a piece of very inexpensive chipboard cut to size at Home Depot, and stapled and nailed it in place. Then I primed and painted the whole thing in BEHR's Night Shade (it looks navy in the picture, but it actually has a lot of green in it).

The new paint helped the situation a lot. I knew I wanted to add moulding or something though to make the flat back more exciting. It's one of the first things you see from our front door, so it was important for the detail to be sort of punchy and fun. I liked this paint treatment from House and Home and thought it would be a cinch to do something similar:

After doing a little sketch and planning out my measurements, I taped off all the straight lines.

Then I put down a base coat of the same Night Shade paint to seal the tape and prevent most of the paint bleeding.

Then on went the white paint for the detail.

I like to pull my tape off immediately, while the paint's still wet. You can see the lines still bled a little, but it was an easy fix with a detail brush.

To make curves in the corners, I just used a round glass as a template and then filled in the lines with the detail brush.

At first I was worried that the white and navy felt too nautical, but I love the relief the white paint provides against all the navy and black in the kitchen, and it also ties in the floors and the marble on the island.

I'm also really happy with how the navy works with the black cabinets. I love mixing black and blues.

And pink just looks good with anything.

Dear Jenny: What would you do with this coffee table?

One of my old clients, Sheila, emailed me with a photo of this coffee table she had purchased off Craigslist for her mom's home a while back. I saw it in person the last time I was visiting. The tortoise shell bamboo is really cool, but the glass panes are really bad (a completely unfortunate bird scene).

Sheila wanted advice about what to do to replace the bird scenes. I think just regular old mirror would be bright and pretty. Antiqued mirror or leafed glass would be nice also.

Another option is painting new glass panes a pretty color. Recently I saw this really (REALLY) expensive but incredibly beautiful credenza at John Rosselli at the D&D. It's a brass frame with reverse painted glass panes (the aqua parts) by Lona Design.

I love the effect of the reverse painted glass! It's glossy and watery and has great depth. These are the color samples Lona Design offers. And you can see better here how pretty the aqua color is (to the right of the card) on the credenza. Wouldn't this color be amazing paired with the tortoise shell bamboo frame on Sheila's table?

To achieve this look with Sheila's coffee table, I would get glass cut to size (Lowe's does this for super cheap!) and then use spray paint, or regular latex paint and a foam roller, to apply color to the underside. I would add glaze for a more transparent look.

The technique would work on paned cabinet doors, glass shelving and any glass topped tables. Which, lucky for us, Craigslist and thrift stores are absolutely chock full of!

Sneak Peek: Living Room Bookshelves

I thought you might enjoy some 'during shots' of the bookshelf project. As a reminder, here's the before:

Then I added stud-shaped moulding from Michaels. Subtle, but a cool discovery if you're looking close. (And isn't that what home decor is all about? I love little surprises.)

So when it came to choosing a paint color for this piece, I went back and forth a lot. I almost did a soft blue gray color so it would be less of a presence in the space. But I decided to try the crazy color combo first and save the blue gray idea as a back up plan. I'm really glad I didn't do the blue gray because I ended up painting the fretwork cabinets pale blue (they were white at the time) and I'm really happy with that color there.

So what crazy colors did I go with? My mom was in town visiting at the time and she suggested coral pink for the inside (genius that she is).

I picked up a quart of Benjamin Moore's Mixed Fruit (2011-50) in semi-gloss and my sweet mom did all the painting for me. Here's the first coat:

And then the second coat. We're thinking, okay, looking pretty good, but we'll see...

You can see in this real estate listing photo that our kitchen is all black, which I actually really like. When your kitchen is front and center, it's best for the appliances and cabinets to sort of fade away. I wanted to carry some of that black over to the living room. We thought it would be nice to frame out the shelves in black and then do the coral on the inside.

In case you're confused by this picture, we added temporary walls to split up the space into bedrooms. This is how the loft looked when we moved in. The door to the girls' room and the bookshelf is directly to the left of the stove area, only set back a couple feet.

We put that first coat of hi gloss black paint on the shelves and we knew we had made a good choice.

I love the contrast.

The orangey coral feels so Dorothy Draper/Greenbrier to me. You'll die when you see how great it looks with the black kitchen (and my new persian rug!!). I'm wrapping up the kitchen island project and then I'll share photos.

P.S. If you look close here you can see I added some little white and black mini-floral trim to the shades. Such an easy fix that made me like the shades 1000x more. Still moving them to make way for my GG sconces though! :)

Whitewashed

I've been super into the pickled or whitewashed look lately so I about died when I saw this Dorothy Draper bench on eBay a couple weeks ago. It was like $700 for just the one, so I didn't bite. But as they say, inspiration is free.

How great is the red with the glaze?! This would be genius on anything with pretty moulding - a mirror, a side table, a little writing desk...

If you're looking for some suggestions on how to get a similar look, I highly recommend Ralph Lauren's technique glaze in Sunfade (which is still available at Home Depot). Or add a bit of white paint to clear Polycrylic.

New Blue Outfit

The silver-leafed cabinets are going to get some new clothes this week. Like I mentioned, the idea was for the cabinets to be an icy blue, (they are currently painted Benjamin Moore's White Ice), but the sunlight in our apartment is so funny. It changes dramatically all day long and most of the time the cabinets look pretty white actually. It's nice, but there is a lot of white in our loft (walls AND floors), so I was hoping the color would have read as a little more blue than it does most of the time. I wanted a pale blue, but not as icy and with a *hint* of green.

Then I did what I should have just done in the first place. I picked up a $3 sample pot from Home Depot. I probably should have picked up a few colors while I was there for comparison's sake, but as soon as I saw the color chip for Martha's Sparkling Brook, I knew that's what I wanted for the cabinets.

I tried a sample patch on the top left corner of the cabinet on the right. I love it. It's similar to the old color, but different enough that it will be worth painting the cabinets again. It's definitely more of what I envisioned in the first place.

Then I ran across this image of Ashley Whittaker's living room today, and I think this is the inspiration my subconscious had all along. Decision confirmed.

Domino

Oh! And how could I possibly forget:

Elle Decor

(Speaking of Mr. Hadley - I'm dying to go to his Sotheby's auction today and bid on that amazing Serge Roche mirror.)

Mirrored (Silver-Leafed) Cabinets

Remember this post? I found two vintage fretwork cabinets for a steal at Everything Goes in Staten Island a while back.

To sass them up a bit (and to give me some hidden storage), I silver leafed the inside of the existing glass panes.

The original wood (it was sort of a fruit wood?) was not so pretty and I knew I wanted to paint it out. While I actually really liked the contrast of the dark color of the wood against the silver-leafed glass, we don't always have the best sun light in our apartment, so I needed to go lighter with the color. I also needed something in the cool color family to balance out the gold tones of our yellow striped rug.

I ended up painting the cabinets a pale icy blue (Benjamin Moore's White Ice OC-58), but I think I'm going to change the color this week -- more on that later.

I love how the panes look kind of like antiqued glass now. You can see very blurry but not true reflections, which makes me happy to know I won't have to actually watch myself when I'm parked in front of ridiculous reality shows (or when I'm doing my Tracy DVD's! Yikes). Huge upside.

Another upside is that fingerprints are a total non-issue here like they would be with traditional mirror panes. I can't see any of the Evie-sized smudges at all.

P.S. Do you see a little sneak peek of the navy buffalo check I'm considering for our dining chairs?

DIY Draper Chests

We took the water taxi to IKEA on Saturday. The boat was fun, but we didn't have the best time at IKEA. That place is such a madhouse on the weekends! I left the store telling myself that I didn't want to go back there for a very long time. Then. I got home and saw an email in my inbox from Nancy. She was sharing a little link to her great blog and a new project. And just like that, I love IKEA again.

The Rast is a little $39 dresser that was absolutely MADE to be hacked and upgraded.

We all remember this great project, but did you ever imagine that the Rast would make such a lovely Draper chest?

Read all about Nancy's genius project here. It's probably one of my very favorite DIYs.

Geometric Paint Treatments

I've been looking for side tables for our living room for a while - I wanted a very petite pair of chests with lots of storage and clean lines. I found this vintage set on Craigslist for $150, which included delivery. They came in absolutely pristine vintage condition and the scale is just what I had in mind. Love them.

I've been really into blonde wood lately, so I would hate to cover up the finish on these, but the color is not really working with my ivory sofa and the new yellow carpet. I've been drawn to geometric decorative paint finishes and I think I could pull something like one of these off here:

Architectural Digest Espana


Adore Home Magazine


Paul Marra chest

Have you done anything similar? Depending on the pattern, I'd probably have to buy or make a stencil, but I think it could be a really fun project.