You guys, my eyeballs are crossing. I've been staring at WAY too many white paint swatches. Who knew this final step could be so hard?
When we last left off with our kitchen renovation, the place looked like this. I had ripped out a big wall that split the kitchen into two sides and then expanded the kitchen window before busting out the arch in the entryway and yanking out the hallway closet.
Ahhhh, that's better. Now all those cabinets need is a coat of paint! Nate wanted to replace them with new custom built ones, but cabinets can be SO expensive. For the time being, I felt like simply turning them all white may give this room the cohesive feel it needs.
Don't mind the baby gate here, or the apparatus on the ceiling to hold the baby swing, or the changing table. We're renovating the boys' room in the midst of all this. Our house is basically a rotating jigsaw puzzle of insanity right now.
I've been really struggling with picking a white paint after realizing recently that all white paint is not created equal. It turns out there are fifty jillion shades of white. In this picture alone, there are four different shades: the antique white on our heirloom table, a bright white on the media console and shelves, a greyish white on the crown molding and a dingy yellowish white on the doors.
I do not have time for all this nonsense. I need to pick one white, slap it on everything in the house, and call it a day.
Especially since I have a TON of bare wood in the kitchen now, thanks to Nate and Opa building me an awesome new kitchen counter! I think I may even paint these chairs. Eventually we're building an island where this table is but – again – we have some competing priorities. Paint has a wonderful way of buying time, ya know?
You can see what our old counter looked like here. It was this weird mottled grey tile that made me sad, so I had Opa help me cut through it and rip it out with my handy-dandy Ryobi reciprocating saw. The original intention was to leave the sink portion intact, remove it whole and then put it back in place after the floor tile was laid. I wanted to build up a whole new counter when life was a little less crazy. However, we wound up discovering black mold behind the sink which meant that the whole thing had to be busted out and built back up with fresh wood.
Wood that needs a coat of paint, STAT. I asked my pals at BEHR to send over some shades of white, and we landed on seven that I really liked. Seven really close shades with subtle nuances that differentiate them ever-so-slightly. Ultra Pure White is a popular pick and one we've used quite a bit before, but it's REALLY white and it made our antique table look dirty. Nano White was one of my favorites, but again we were worried that it was too bright and perhaps a bit blue and would look out of place. Polar Bear and Powdered Snow were the same story. Swiss Coffee was too brownish. Snowfall White was definitely in the running as it looked gorgeous with our kitchen in person, but when photographed it seemed to take on this weird yellowish hue.
That's how Whisper White won out in the end. We held this stick up near our beloved antique table, held it against the Dolphin Fin grey shade (also BEHR) that coats our kitchen walls, and even painted a bit of the sample on a spare cupboard to see how it performed in various lighting throughout the day. In every angle, at every time, it proved to be the most neutral. No weird undertones. Just white.
Best of all, it looked super-sharp against my custom-laid walnut countertop (you may have noticed this counter serving as the backdrop for my parchment salmon and egg croissant recipes). Finally, I think all the white everywhere may help tie in this out-of-place stove that doesn't match any of our stainless steel stuff. It'll eventually be swapped out for a 48-inch stove-and-a-half, but for the time being it's working fine and I want to cross off some more basic projects before digging into appliance upgrades.
Next up? Master bedroom color!
Do you have a favorite white color you use for trim or cabinets in your house?