Making progress with kitchen makeover.....Farrow & Ball 'Cornforth White'...

'We' (as always I mean the OH by this) have been making progress with our kitchen makeover!

As the top cupboards and fireplace are all staying as they are, he wanted to paint those, so at least that's one job done. The best way to paint with F&B eggshell paint is to use a mini-roller, it really helps you get a smooth matt finish. There's still major work left to do as the walls and ceiling still have to be repainted,the bottom cabinets have to be totally remade, the new oak flooring put in, and so on....... It will take ages for the next stage of the kitchen makeover to be completed-even though the OH is very handy he is still making everything himself from scratch at weekends, and it's amazing how long it takes to make cupboards and drawers with just a hand saw!!!

The trouble is, once you do get one job completed it shows up other flaws that you hadn't even planned on correcting! Case in point being all the white plug sockets you can see in the tongue and groove panelling-suddenly they looked shabby and dated once the panelling around them was freshly painted. Luckily, I found some really cheap polished chrome ones on Ebay for just £3.50 each (see in the second photo), and they also match the new cabinet knobs also bought on Ebay! What I like about these sockets is that they are nearly totally chrome-even the switch buttons-and have hardly any white plastic on them whatsoever. The knobs I bought were also a third of the price that Homebase charge who stock the identical same ones. What would we do without Ebay and the internet-nearly everything I've bought for the kitchen has come from Ebay so far!

The cabinet hinges have also been resprayed chrome to match the knobs (third photo)-it was much cheaper to respray them then replace them with new chrome hinges, as they were good quality brass hinges.
Another project the OH wants to do is improve the ceiling coving (called crown moulding in the States?). It's not original Victorian coving (unlike the rest of the house) and it just looks wrong for the room. However, it's a bit of a messy job to tear that off the ceiling and replace it, so the OH is going to add rows of wooden beading to the top and bottom of it to make it look Victorian. Apparently this will be much cheaper and easier than replacing it-all you then need to do is paint it white to match. Well, that's the plan anyhow...

As you can see Farrow & Ball's 'Cornforth White' is much more of a pale grey than a white-luckily that's just what we wanted! I love the new colour of the cupboards and think they look much brighter and fresher than before. I'm also pleased that I like the 'look' of painting the tongue and groove panelling and the cupboards all in the same colour-before they were two separate colours, green and cream. It sounds strange but I think it looks more restful on the eye!

By the way, although the roses are from the garden, the ranunculus are silk-I just like the contrast all the pink makes with the grey!

Finally decided....

After much deliberation we've finally decided upon our colour-Cornforth White! The name is a little misleading, as it doesn't look white at all, instead it's a sort of very flat, light grey. It's quite a drab Georgian kind of colour and it goes well with the worktop and all the nickel cup handles.

We've got a big 2.5 litre tin of it in eggshell, and that should be plenty for all the woodwork in the room. I love the finish of eggshell paint rather than gloss, as it looks flatter and matter, doesn't it?

I always think that the tester pots of Farrow & Ball paint look so sweet-like miniature versions of the real thing. Even though I hate the colour brown, it somehow looks very classic and classy on their paint tins doesn't it? I couldn't imagine the tins in any other design, and I suspect that their design is a big part of their appeal-well it is for me anyhow! Now we've just got to get the room finished....

Decorating decisions...kitchen cabinets...

Just when I think I have decided upon a paint colour for my kitchen cabinets I change my mind again! I have got just about every paint card from all the 'posh paint' companies, and I have tried out so many colours! The 'Rita Says' sample pot I ordered, disappointingly turned out to match the computer screen sample colour and not the colour chart, being pale blue instead of the grey I wanted! At the moment I am torn between two 'Farrow & Ball' greys-'Blackened' and 'Cornforth White'.
I think I prefer the 'Cornforth White' but that could all change when I buy the sample pot! We have the 'Blackened' in our bathroom, so I think I'd like a different colour in the kitchen.....
Another good website to browse through is 'Posh Paints'. They stock all the designer posh paint brands and group them into colour families which is really useful if you are trying to compare different brands versions of the same colour!

Ongoing chaos...

Well, major progress has been made, although our kitchen is still in major chaos! All of yesterday was spent removing the old worktops and fitting the new granite ones. Thankfully, thankfully they all fit perfectly (I admit to being slightly worried as no templates were made), although they haven't been sealed in place yet as we have to wait for the new oven to be fitted in first.
Removing the old worktops took a long, long time
and involved jacking up the faux chimney breast until it could be re-supported by the new worktop. If you look in the third and fourth photos you can see the chimney breast floating a bit in space! The slabs of granite had to be slid underneath the sides of the chimney breast and not cut around it as I had envisaged-the OH looked at me as if I was mad when I asked how they were going to cut around the outline of the chimney breast!! We are also going to change the design of the lower cabinets slightly to make them match the top cupboards better. So it's going to be a very long time before all the cabinets and woodwork can be painted pale grey (Farrow & Ball's 'Blackened') but I can't wait! It was a two-man job to lift the longest piece of granite (thank goodness I'm female...) and there was lots of dust to clear up as well. The old green oven was covered as you can see, and somehow I don't think we'll be using that again....