“The first time ever I saw……”
our kitchen
it had very plain white: walls, woodwork, cabinets, knobs, faucet. The parquet floors are throughout the downstairs: not my favorite, but I can live with them (for a while…)! But the REAL question was color. We have several different design “areas” going on here: the walls, of course, the wall just above the counters (aka backsplash), the gray corian counter tops, the butcher block island top, and…don’t forget:
the ceiling!
Yes, the first time I saw this room my eye went directly upward to that great expanse of ceiling. It called out for some real color.
But I’m getting ahead of myself…let’s go back to the walls. Here is the main counter area:
We thought we would paint the back splash area, and one of my first testers was that wonderful “Mysterious” from Benjamin Moore that we had used, so successfully, in the lavatory. And yes, I will give you another post about that wonderful little room and some more great details in there. Maybe next week?
Needless to say, the Mysterious didn’t work so well in the kitchen! Yellow? Gray? The debate went on for weeks months. When I couldn’t stand it any longer (or, truthfully, husband couldn’t stand it any longer….) I looked for advice. Off I went (virtually) to Kelly at Porterhouse Designs. Kelly is in the Washington, D.C. area so I had thought she might be able to actually come down and take a look at my house & kitchen. Well, we ended up working solely on line, from videos I had made of the space, from more pictures, from endless reference ideas I would send to her and several phone meetings. And this is a part of the design board she came up with:
Look down on the lower left: I had said I was thinking of doing a tile backsplash in subway tiles. I’ll talk more about those great paint colors, chairs, knobs and more in future posts, but for today I’ll continue with the tile story!
Here’s a before and after of the recessed window area above the sink:
I’m SO glad we decided to do that entire area with tile. What a difference. We even took out the woodwork just below the window frame to make room for one row of tiles.
These tiles are just…..off white and have a really unique beveled edge so they don’t look so flat and dull.
Perfect! They are exactly what I wanted. What is it about tiles? I’ve never had them in a kitchen before; but what a difference. They finish it off? They make it look like a kitchen? They add a warmth? I’m not sure, but I know we made the right decision.
