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Our Kitchen Cabinet Paint Colors

May 15, 2014

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Part of my Ace Hardware Blogger duties this month included checking out their new paint studio–which is very boutique like with the slide out drawers of paint chips. Classy!–and trying out their new line of Valspar Optimus line they started carrying. Choosing what to paint wasn’t difficult, our kitchen cabinets have been on my list since we moved in and they moved to the top once we finished our floors and they turned even more bright orange.

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When I went into our new store, they had a large display of a lot of colors and then pull out boutique drawers of swatches categorized by how you might want a room to feel. “Cozy up.” “Carefree fun.” “Luxe life.” “Serene Scene”–which is full of blues and sea glass and greens–where I was naturally drawn to first. Truthfully, I want our house to feel like all of those things, but the “Carefree fun” colors I immediately ruled out for the cabinets. They were bold and bright, without an ounce of neutral in them. I, maybe predictably, grabbed a bunch of whites, grays, greens, and blues and headed home to take a look at them within our space. After a couple days I narrowed 30 down to three.

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Four Winds, Green-gray Linen, and Swiss Livery. Swiss Livery ended up being a little too close to the wall color so it got nixed and we were left with two. Originally, we were all for painting all the cabinets the Gray-green linen (perfect name for it) but our kitchen feels a little dark compared to the rest of the house so we resolved to paint the uppers Four Winds.

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And the lowers that beautiful linen-like color.

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But after we decided to use both hues, we had to figure out, “What about the island and the pantry and the cabinets that go down the side of the fridge?” Here’s a horrible, not accurately colored photoshop rendering of what we decided:

mockup

We’ll do all the uppers white and the cabinets going down the side of the fridge. The lowers, pantry and the island will be in the Green-Gray Linen. It felt the most balanced to us.

These aren’t our forever cabinets. In fact, they aren’t in very good shape. But, we know the power of paint and hope that this will give our kitchen the refresh it needs to tide us over for a full on kitchen remodel in the future. Maybe some new hardware (Greta has been climbing up the drawers and actually bending the knobs–gah!), definitely some new bar stools and over time we’ll update the appliances until our actual remodel.

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We’re excited to get started, try out the new Valspar line and share with you our process in the coming days. You can get your paint on, too! This Saturday and Sunday, Ace Hardware is celebrating their new paint studio by having a huge buy one, get one free sale on their paints–incredible deal. Cabinet or room painting in your future, too?

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Ace90th copy

 

We’re excited to be collaborating with Ace Hardware as a part of their Ace Blogger Panel this year. Ace has provided us with compensation and the paint to complete this project and we can’t wait to share with you our progress and our own opinions of the product in the future.

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What do you think?

  1. I really like the information provided in this article and I really like the way you have explained each and everything so well. Very well done with the article, hope that you will continue to do posting

  2. Sachin Jain says:

    I bought the Valspar® Optimus Paint from ACE. Can anyone help to know whether this paint is good for kitchen cabinets or not . Paint description says good for interior walls, ceiling.

  3. Brittney says:

    We recently painted our cabinets a light color and we found tiny holes everywhere. We had to fill every single hole before we could continue (there were 100’s)! Be prepared to make a few fixes on the way!

  4. […] of paint–and removing our really low microwave and the surrounding cabinets helped, too. In this post, we discussed our paint scheme, but as a refresher we went with Valspar’s Four winds for the […]

  5. Amanda says:

    I love this! I definitely took advantage of the sale weekend, we went for “Morning Downpour” for our cabinets, and “Wedding Cake” for trim elsewhere in our new house!
    How are you liking Optimus? I’ll be interested to see how durable it is, and if it self-levels to the extent that Benjamin Moore Advance does. Thanks again!

  6. caroline [the diy nurse] says:

    It looks so good- perfect combo! TOtally bummed I didn’t see that sale until now- a week too late for us but I’ll share it with a friend

  7. Jenny @ My Nearly Empty Nest says:

    We were at Ace last weekend looking for paint for our just-closed-on house and I pulled the same Gray-Green Linen swatch. Great color. Also loving the new Paint Studio look at Ace and, as always, the awesomely helpful employees! Although we ruled out the Linen color we will be hitting up the sale this weekend to have them color match to Porter Paint’s Sharkskin. Looking forward to seeing your cabinets completed.

  8. Erin says:

    The Gray-Green looks minty? Is it minty in real life? If so, I love that idea – it’s bold and fun!

  9. Mariela Niland @ OhNiland.blogspot.com says:

    I can’t tell from your pictures, but are your cabinets laminate or rather, is any part of them made with laminate wood? I would love to update my kitchen and bathroom with paint, but I don’t know whether it is even doable on laminate cabinets. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing your new bright room!

    • Julia says:

      These are solid wood. But with a good primer (ben moore’s fresh start is great or I’ve had good luck with zinsser) you can paint laminate cabinets no problem.

  10. Linda @ It All Started With Paint says:

    Loving the combo. I was thinking of something similar in my kitchen, so I’m anxious to see how it turns out!

    :) Linda

  11. Stacie M says:

    Glad I read this! I am planning to painting my kitchen walls and cabinets. Now if I can just decide on a color by this weekend so that I can take advantage of the sale.

  12. Kim // Yellow Brick Home says:

    Ooh, I love that gray green linen color!

  13. Shellie says:

    I’m super busy with colors so I have been trying understand the flow of them better. Why did you decide to paint the cabinets 2 different colors?

    • Julia says:

      I touched on that in the post. We really didn’t want an all white kitchen, but wanted to brighten things up. The white really injects a lot of light and the green-gray for color. :)

  14. Meagan Briggs says:

    Oooo! Excited!! The new color on the cabinets is going to TRANSFORM your kitchen!

    And I bet you’re so excited to do projects now without a big belly and not having a lot of energy!

  15. Amanda {NoDak Nest} says:

    Painting our cabinets was one of the most rewarding projects I’ve done but WOW was it a lot of work and we don’t have nearly as many cabinets as you do. Good luck! They’ll look great!

    • Julia says:

      Ugh. I know it! When I painted our cabinets in our last house, I waited until Chris was out of town and worked late nights all week on it. At least this time, I’ll have his help–but we have at least double the cabinets!

  16. Emma says:

    We plan on partaking in the paint sale this weekend our living and bathroom are in need of freshening up!

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