Our kitchen gray cabinets transformation: from gold —–> gray

Transforming our house has been a slooooooooooooooooooooow process. But we are making headway with our new gray cabinets!!!

 (photo cred to ES Photography in Kansas City who did our real estate photos)

Many of you may remember when our kitchen looked like this.  I know in this professional photo from E.S. Photography above that the cabinets appear light and creamy, but it really was gold and the finish on them was very outdated.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 cabinets.  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 on this color for my gray cabinets.  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.

We made our boys help prep the cabinets because hello, free labor.

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 The Magic Brush painted all of my gray 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.

We used our drying rack from Marti Carroll  at The Bayou Bungalow (if you paint cabinets for a living, this thing is a life saver) for the project. The more doors we got done, the more I loved the color and was confident in my decision!

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.  Yes, your hardware is like jewelry and yes, I mix and match too much of that too.  But, I love my new kitchen knobs and pulls!  They all came from Hobby Lobby.  A few of them I had to paint.  You can find my tutorial and video for painting cabinet handles on my blog post HERE  or watch a video HERE or just click below.

Just a side note: I didn’t really lick the cabinet handles.  I only licked my finger and that’s definitely way classier.  Oddly enough, the local Fox 4 station aired part of this video one morning before I did a segment.  Jeeeeessssssh….. the video with me licking stuff in my workout clothes is the one that people saw all over town. Lol. Just #keepinitreal .

And finally the room came back together.  But you know how home projects are….. once you do one thing…. the snowball begins!

So shortly after getting the gray cabinets painted, I had to ditch the tall, old-world barstools for some new, shorter ones from TJ Maxx.  And I had to paint 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’ll be blogging about the painted tile next week. (Update: here is the painted backsplash post!) If you want to be sure you don’t miss that email, go HERE to enter your email address.

See the updated final kitchen here. 

Until then,  I’m obsessed with my new gray cabinets.  If you want to know our process for cabinet painting, you can go HERE to get my best-selling, 40 minute long DIY video.  We just used gray paint instead of the cream… and we didn’t do a glaze.  Easy breezy. (Feel free to use the coupon code LEARN50 to get the video 1/2 off!!!) If you think you want to take on cabinet painting as an income source, I will teach you everything you need to know in my Cabinet Painting as a Career.

If you are on the fence about “will you like grays and creams and blues when you have always loved red and browns and golds”…. the answer is YES!  I pinkie swear it feels so light and fresh. I always prided myself in liking warm, rich colors and I still do, but it feels so good to rid my home of the gold.   I’m SOLD!

If you need help picking out new paint colors, get my free video of my favorite wall colors. I also have 10 quick & easy home updates you can do before dinner! These easy improvements will make your home feel fresh and updated!

Happy painting,

Jennifer

PS As always, if you are on a desktop, you can use the PIN IT button on each picture to save to your Pinterest account.  Or, if on your cell phone, visit my Pinterest page HERE to repin.

Update: My gray color scheme continues with: new gray patterned stairs, my new carrera marble backsplash and new Silestone countertops! It’s been a gorgeous change and I am just so happy with it! I hope it gives you inspiration!