House Tour: Kitchen Reveal

I've been working on my mini kitchen update for quite some time.  I really wanted to create an entryway with a place to hang a coat and drop a bag.  I also mentioned that I wanted my kitchen to be a place that I want to be.  I want my kitchen to be a happy kitchen.  Here's what it looked like before.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that my husband and I don't own our house.  He is a pastor and our home is the church parsonage.  That means that any updates we make have to paid for by the church or by us.  The changes I've made to the kitchen didn't involve an major renovations.  They were purely cosmetic.  It's looking much happier these days!

Here's a list of the projects I did to complete my happy kitchen.
1.  Clean the cabinets.  In a previous post I mentioned that I might paint the cabinets.  I decided that was way too much work for the amount of cabinets we have.  I decided to try cleaning the cabinets and covering the scratches with Old English Oil Scratch Cover.  Since I only had the dark oil, I mixed it with a little bit of Murphy Oil Soap.  I couldn't believe how much better the cabinets looked.  I decided that it was good enough for me!
2. I spray painted all of the cabinet hardware black.  I thought about getting new hardware, but it would have come to about $200.  That seemed a little steep and a frivolous thing to ask the church to pay for.  I decided to spray paint a few to see how it went.  Much better!
3. Paint!  I chose a bold, coral color.  It's Sherwin Williams Jovial.
4.  Seagrass rug from Overstock
5.  Entryway

I totally copied this entryway idea from A Beautiful Mess.  It was the perfect solution for this space.  I got the crates for about $5 each from Michaels with a 50% off coupon.  I had the boards cut at Lowe's.  The hooks came from Lowe's.  I spray painted them black, because they didn't have black hooks in stock.  I got the clips from Office Max.

Flowers when you walk in the door?  I don't know about you, but that definitely makes me happy!

6.  I painted the door black.

7.  I made a valance for the window above the sink and a matching roman shade for the other window.  I used this tutorial.

8.  I created a seating area.  The bench came from Overstock.  We used to have a small table there.  I didn't think the area was large enough for a table and we really didn't need it since our dining room is just outside the kitchen.  I wanted a place to sit so that if I'm making dinner my husband can sit and chat and vice versa.  We still need to get a new phone.  It's difficult to find wall telephones these days!

9.  I made a few prints for the wall.  I purchased a set of watercolor tea clip art on Etsy and blew those up.  I created the text prints myself.  It was so easy and so cheap!

10.  I bought a new kitchen clock on Amazon.  See it down there?  I'm thinking I might try to find a cute dry erase board to hang beside the calendar.

11.  I bought a stainless steel trashcan from Target.

12.  I collected plates to hang on the wall.  This is one of my favorite things in the kitchen.  When the kitchen was painted I wasn't sure what to do with that strip of coral at the top of the kitchen.  Adding the plates was another inexpensive option.  I collected the plates from local thrift shops.

What do you think?  Have you made any updates to your kitchen lately to make it happy?  If you'd like to see more decorating with coral head over to Censational Girl.  She recently wrote a post on the topic.

Linking up at Suburbs Mama.