Kitchen Update and How to Create Visuals

It's been a loong time since I've blogged about my kitchen, so I thought it was about time that I give you an update. 

If you remember, originally my plan was to keep the existing cabinets the same mainly because my husband was completely against me painting them white. Slowly but surely, however, I was able to convince him. 

At first, I wanted to get them done in June, but my husband was NOT happy about tackling a huge project in the middle of the summer, so that's why our kitchen projects have come to a complete halt these last couple of months. We both decided we would rather enjoy the summer than spend it working on our house. So instead of painting our cabinets, we have been thoroughly enjoying going to his parent's cottage, the beach, hanging out with friends, and in a couple of weeks we head to the Pacific Northwest for a 13 day vacation, woot woot! Once we get back from our vacation in Mid-August we are planning to finally start our project so we are in the process of finalizing details!! 

Now if we rewind a little bit, some of you maybe asking, how did you convince your husband to do this project? I can't say that there was just one thing that convinced him, but one thing he struggled with is envisioning how it would look.  So, that said today I'm going to show you my favorite way to create visuals when it comes to painting a space! 

There are a lot of different free programs when creating visuals, but when I want to create a visual that just involves changing color of things, I love using the Sherwin William's ColorSnap Visualizer. Even if I'm not going to be using Sherwin William like in the case of our kitchen cabinets, it still allows me to create a visual for my husband, who is not very good at imaging things in his head, and myself. If I'm not actually using Sherwin Williams paint in my project, I try to find something that's very similar. In my actual project I plan to use Benjamin Moore's Simply White, so I just found a similar white from SW. I wouldn't advise to skip the step of actually sampling a color in a space, this method is to simply visualize what it would look like to change something to another color.   

 And no, this is not sponsored from Sherwin William, I just love passing on things that I have found and loved. 

So they make it very simple to use which I love. The first thing you do is upload a photo of the space that you want to work on, in my case a picture of my kitchen. Next you use the define area (circled in blue) to trace the area that you want to change the color of, shown above, and then select the color that you want to change it to.

What I love is that the color added is slightly translucent so that you can see the structure beneath it.

I then, continue to do the same thing for every section of cabinets, or piece that I want to change the color of.

After the cabinets were “painted” white, I next changed the color of the floor since we need new flooring and I wanted to show my husband how a little darker floor will look better in the space to add contrast to the white cabinets. To do the flooring I used the define area feature as well as the magical wand feature that I have circled above.

Here is the visual all created! Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not perfect, but it helps take your ideas and create a visual of what your ideas would look like which I think is very helpful.

And here is the visual with some added extras that I’ve shared links to below. To break up all the white and grays and to go with the rest of my home I plan to add a white and navy rung in front of the sink and some greenery to the windowsill.

Knife Drawer Insert / Fruit Basket / Fern / Navy Rug / Oxo sink storage basket

In addition to working out the details and plans on how I’m going to tackle this painting project, which I will share at another time, I’ve also been looking into other ways to make this space more functional. In the past, two sets of knives have sat on our countertops but now that we have new countertops and I want to make the space more minimalistic, I want to get a drawer insert to store my knives. I also have a banana hanger and a separate fruit basket, but I want to get something that fits both needs so I only have one thing on our countertops.  In addition, I've wanted to find a solution for storing my sponge for handing washing dishes so I found this oxo sink basket and have been loving it. In the scheme of life none of this matters, but as I anticipate the painting of our cabinets these are things that I’ve been wrapping my mind around.

We aren’t going to start the painting process for another month, but once we start I assure you I will be blogging all about it! Stay Tuned!