I see a red door...

the finished project!

The "before" pic

After the base coat

I don't know why BLogger won't load my pics right - it is jumbling them around and won't let me put them later in the post. GRRRRRRRRRRR

I have wanted to paint my kitchen for as long as I can remember. The builder put flat paint in the kitchen (seriously? come ON!) and if you know anything about flat paint you know that if you breathe on it it marks up. Well, that's not cool for a toddler! Ours quickly got stained with handprints, nose prints (the dogs), strained carrots etc..... to the point where I was embarassed to have people in my kitchen.

I have been talking about faux finishing it forEVER. I LOVE the look of it and thought it would do well to cover up all the little marks we manage to get around here :) Well, last week my husband had had enough. While we were picking up paint for baby2's nursery I saw a complete faux finish look that I loved. I went on and on to Steve about how it was exactly what I wanted. He told me to buy all the paint, to stop talking about doing it and actually do it. I hemmed and hawed but finally decided to get all the paint. So we left Home Depot weighed down with gallon upon gallon of paint.

I told my father about my plans, and he offered to come up and help me get started. So Friday he came up bright and early and started taping up all the doors and windows. WHAT a job that was! Glad I didn't have to do it! My old friend Kyle (and his adorable daughter Lilly) also came up to help. He'd done a bunch of faux finish painting before so he was a huge help in teaching me technique.

I had NO IDEA how much work painting was! When we did Madda's nursery it wasn't too bad because we just painted on top of the basecoat already there. Plus we were painting flowers and trees, not the entire wall. By the time my husband came home, I was exhausted! I was just thankful little Madeline wasn't there to stick her hands in everything!

However, I love the end result. It's very very different, but I love it. It's motivated me to get some other rooms painted in this house of Beige and White. We'll see...