tales of a very ugly kitchen: paint

With our big ticket purchases on the books for the kitchen, we put our remaining funds–actually dwindling, is more like it–toward paint. Removing the wallpaper border at the ceiling revealed the original pastel pink (pink!) paint from yesteryear. I’m beginning to think the previous homeowners ate sherbet constantly, or at least were culinarily inspired by shades of sherbet.

After some heckling from my husband (who paints in his underwear, by the way) about which shade of beige I’d choose for this project, I bristled and plunged forth fearfully (and, I’ll admit, spitefully), toward color. I was actually shocked at my own color epiphany, when “orange” rang in my head as an accent wall possibility.  I heard the color gods saying, “Embrace the orange!” So I did a double take, and had to admit, all signs were pointing to orange. The foyer tile that I truly believe once graced the floors of a fine Mexican restaurant had many orange tones. The African mahogany trim that, according to the aforementioned husband who paints in his skivvies, is extremely exotic and hard to paint, also has orange tones.  (On the trim topic, I don’t buy it, and it WILL be painted, someday… but I digress.)  The hard truth is, there’s no escaping the orange in this house. I realized that I can’t afford new foyer flooring and new trim, but I can choose a color that might actually enhance these sad relics.

Once again, I repeated my “this is a cheap kitchen remodel” mantra and started painting samples in shades of orange on the accent wall. I homed in on a terra cotta shade (B.M. Sienna Clay #104), and after two coats on the wall and the initial color shock, it started to grow on me. For the cabinet walls, I chose a beautiful creamy beige (B.M. Alpaca #1074) that soothed the orange and charcoal gray tones and warmed up the white appliances.  More beige? “Okay, okay, ya gotta have a little neutral in the mix to take that orange down a notch,” I defended to my painting partner.  ”Now go put some pants on so I can concentrate on cutting in!”