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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Do you think I'm crazy?

I came across this post on Centsational Girl (fabulous blog for inspiration, by the way) and it immediately got my wheels spinning. Well actually my wheels have been spinning for a while because I'm ready for a change in my house. We've lived in our house for 7 years and have had the same color on the wall in our foyer/kitchen/family room the whole time. Lately I haven't been feeling the khaki-green color and have been secretly longing for an elf to come in and paint it overnight. I think the strongest hatred right now is my kitchen, which is unfortunately, where I spend a lot of my time. It's the size but it's also the honey oak cabinets that match the floor and therefore create a terrible orangish yellow color for the entire room. I don't think there's any color I could paint the walls to lighten it up or fix it. But when I saw this post where she transformed her blah honey oak staircase to this fabulous dark mahogany/walnut color, I was smitten! I thought I could give it a whirl on my banister and then if I like it, I could move on to my kitchen cabinets. I wasn't too keen on stripping, sanding, taping, painting but then I saw this post and she just stained right on top of the wood. It gave me hope but now I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to try it. What do you think? Here's the before (hers not mine but mine looks practically the same with the same carpet, walls, and floor color):

And here's the after. Please note I'm just talking about the banister, not the wallpaper and moulding on the wall. Baby steps people, baby steps!

Isn't that amazing how that little touch makes such a big difference?!

6 comments:

  1. Quite a transformation! If you are looking for more kitchen inspiration, I'll paste a few links to another blog below. Their whole house transformation is amazing, but the kitchen was done on a budget and looks fantastic.

    I'd be interested to see the banister up close before doing a whole kitchen of cabinets. I tend to lean toward painting cabinets since I've seen some re-staining jobs that looked great from a distance but not very good up close. If her method yields good results up close, I'd say it's a winner for sure considering the foyer!

    Main link: http://www.flythroughourwindow.com/2008/04/house-renovation-part-4-kitchen-fr/

    Discussion of method: http://www.flythroughourwindow.com/2009/04/round-2/

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  2. I love it!! If you decide to go through with it we will need to see before and after pictures!

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  3. Wow! What an incredible job you did! I'm so impressed!

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  4. Much better !!!
    Sometimes the oak/white wall houses are so generic. You added alot of warmth to the entry way.

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  5. Oh my goodness! It looks so much different! I love it.

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  6. I love it!!! When we put in our floors in 2006 we stained our handrails cherry to match our brazilian cherry hardwoods that went down. Our banister before was this ugly walnut death looking color including the spindles. We went with white spindles and cherry railing and I LOVE it! I will never regret it! I say go for it!

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