I couldn't tell if y'all have been wanting this kitchen reveal or not.

Ha!

Sarcasm overload.

Yeah. Yeah. I know y'all are chompin' at the bit for me to unveil all that has been going on over here. Any day now, peeps! Seriously, I'm ready to reveal! I'm waiting on that last sponsor's product to arrive and I'll be revealing it all! And, if you're good, there may be vlogging involved. Just sayin.

In the mean time, because the big reveal and giveaway may overshadow the smaller things, I wanted to show y'all a couple of things that I did as a part of the overall makeover.

The colors that I chose to do, in my opinion, are super versatile but, can easily lean towards a very modern look. Well, "modern" just isn't me. I love it but, in small doses. So, I wanted to make sure to incorporate a lot of my favorite looks so that the overall look wasn't totally pigeon-holed into one genre. I'm a big fan of "shabby chic" and I never want all my furniture to be super matchy matchy. My favorite thing to do when painting is to distress edges. Well, kinda not something I wanted to do with walls and trim and cabinets. (Though, I'm seriously considering distressing my cabinets) So, I decided to take some key pieces and give them less of a flat black and more of a distressed and old looking black.

The main focus of one wall in the living room is a large picture frame with a collage of some of my fave pics of the kids. The frame itself was one of those huge glossy wooden frames. Another wall has a really big mirror on it that also had a glossy wooden frame. One of my random items is this wooden thing that I'm pretty sure my mom used to have sitting in front of the fireplace when I was younger. I have never had anything to do with it except use it to cover things up but, I just love it. It was also glossy wood but, darker than the mirror and frame.

In this pic you can see the wooden fireplace/random cover thing sitting between the table and rocking chair and the big picture frame on the wall. You can see that from afar they just look black. (The flash of the camera also makes them look shinier than they are) Closer, they have a much more distressed look and the stained black look I was going for.


Yes, that black cord is driving me crazy. The only thing I can think to do is paint it white like the wall. Hopefully it will help disguise it some.

The big mirror is the same.



The last items I did in this way were the bar stools. And, just so you know, the fact that my home now requires barstools is a MAJOR part of the kicthen makeover! The barstools weren't glossy to start with but, I did the painting in the same fashion as the other items.



So, how I did it....

First, I didn't prime any of these things. You can't get the finished look I got if you prime. Now, if the item is something that will be handled a lot then you need to sand it down so you have a good surface to paint on. The frame and mirror in my house never get touched so, I left them glossy and painted over it. The barstools were, luckily, unfinished.

I used a small paintbrush. I got a lot of paint on the brush with each new stroke. Long brush strokes to create a streaky look. You want to completely paint the surface but, not saturate it. Less is more because you can always go back and add some here and there if you didn't get enough coverage. Once finished it looks like a nice, already distressed, black stain. Love it!



So, any day now on the rest of the reveal! Get ready! Get your cameras out because when this giveaway hits, I want to see pics of YOUR kitchens that are in dire need of makeovers! I'll give ya all the details when I do the reveal. Any day now. Hold yer horses.

Now, go paint something!