Move Over Chip and Joanna Gaines...

So, let me start by saying this is not a home improvement blog. Obviously. And my husband and I are not particularly handy. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, there wasn’t anything wrong with our kitchen. See, not that bad:

But because we live in the Pacific NW, where the winters are long…and dreary, our kitchen, with its dark cherry cabinets, brown granite counters, and walnut floors was like a black hole, sucking all the light from the house.

I would have loved to tear everything out and start from scratch but, you know…money. So I set out on a mission and began pouring over Pinterest (the land of inexperienced DIY-ers). I spent upwards of year pinning paint colors, brands, and techniques. I read what-not-to-dos.

Along the way, I realized that if I changed the cabinets, the counters might have to go too. But I didn’t want to throw thousands of dollars into new granite, quartz, marble, or some other solid surface. Again, I searched Pinterest—what could one do to change their existing granite? Turns out most people don’t mess with granite, even when it’s ugly granite. Then I stumbled across this blog post…a woman after my own heart. Originally, I planned to do something like she did, a white marbled countertop. But I worried that virtually everyone I knew had marble. So, after experimenting with some samples, and watching every Stone Coat Countertop video on YouTube, I decided to try something different—there is virtually no limit to what can be done with this product.

In the end, our project turned out beautifully! I’m so glad I did the research and did the prep work—I can’t stress this enough, don’t skimp on the prep work!

 You can read a detailed breakdown of our paint project here. This was where we started, although I’ll preface this by saying if we’d been smart we would have done the counters first to avoid the possibility of messing up our new paint job. We didn’t…but it could have been disastrous!

And here you can see how we did our countertops. The product we used can be used on just about any surface (tile, MDF, laminate, and yes, granite), and it’s super easy to use! I cannot say enough about it or the company’s customer service.

After we were finished, I thought I would be able to live with the black granite backsplash—I mean, everything else would be light and bright, right? But, much to my husband’s chagrin, it turned out I could not. This time, for the sake of marital harmony, I opted not to rope my husband into another DIY project—somehow I felt that tiling was above our pay grade. So we headed to Floor & Décor to pick our tile and hired a pro for the install. Demo and install took about three days, and we love (LOVE!) the finished look! The new tile tied everything together.

Now I’m no longer worried that the gloomy NW winter is coming, my kitchen has become my happy place.