Easy Kitchen Refresh

We moved into our 1892 Victorian house about 3 years ago. At that time I was sure I wanted to paint my cabinets blue.. Hague Blue from Farrow and Ball to be exact. I knew I was getting the marble counter tops I wanted and it already had these amazing diamond pattern black and white floors. I loved those! My husband however did not… so unfortunately we put in laminate floors. So here we went, put in our own cabinets and painted them, changed the floor, rather covered it up and added antique 1890s ceiling tin as a wall covering in the “prep” area. 

So here is the before shots of when we walked in the door before closing on the house. Ugly teal cabinets and orange walls 🤢

Then we wanted to get new cabinets and as a designer I knew it was gonna cost us $20,000 to get at least an ok look we wanted, I decided at that point I don’t want to spend the price of a used car on my kitchen. I thought about some of the places I deal with and remembered local there was a place that sold reclaimed and brand new cabinets and all kinds of building materials. I went and found stock cabinets in solid oak with soft close drawers. Then My husband installed the ceiling tin and I went to work painting the cabinets. 

He won out and we covered my floor and then we were all done!  I wanted the look of an English/Victorian Era kitchen so I went with open shelving. We have a butlers pantry and Scullery so we had lots of other storage. Here is the then finished kitchen..

So let’s fast forward two years… I am over the blue and loving the idea of green cabinets. Since I am so picky it took me weeks to find the perfect green. I finally found Vintage Vogue by Benjamin Moore and decided I wanted to give a 2023 update to my “antique’ kitchen. I wanted to somehow take out the wood shelves which I hated cleaning and update the look which, ironically is not an update but a  version of a Victorian kitchen. I decided on a marble slab shelf on brass brackets. As I was so excited about the colors and changes coming together I knew it would not be all I wanted if I didn’t expose my awesome black and white floor. So I spoke to my husband about it and he agreed to do it. I was so happy he came around to my side😂.

Here is what the finished kitchen update looks like. we are very pleased with the turnout. It is actually really inexpensive to change up a kitchen with paint and other items. Like the shelf piece was just $130 at a local countertop showroom. Sometimes they even throw away pieces they deem usable so you can score free pieces that way too. All in all it cost me $350 to update my kitchen. Not too bad for a simply weekend project. The floor tile is Armstrong and you can pick it up at Lowe’s very inexpensively.