What time is it? Time for color!

The cabinet door and drawers are gone. The hanging cabinet kaput. What's next? Color of course! Rich and I needed to sit down and decide on the colors that would serve as the unifying base for all the fun stuff to come. What shades should we choose? Blue, gold, yellow, red? By the way, in case I have not mentioned it before, when deciding that Rich should create our art  kitchen we ultimately deiced to work with the existing cabinets rather than have him build new cabinetry from scratch. Not only would that save time and money, but it would lend a consistency to everything. We knew that each "alteration" on the drawers and doors would be different, so there was an attraction to having continuity in another way. Plus, not having the entire kitchen ripped out also meant much less disruption overall.

I posted the clock piece above to give you an idea of the kind of palette Rich uses in his art. Colorful and fun! The interesting thing is that he uses Mike Paint from the Old Fashioned Milk Pant Company in Groton, MA. so it is paint that is contains only natural ingredients and will not harm you or the enviroment.

Got Milk?

Does Milk Paint have milk? To tell the truth, I have no idea, but it is comforting to know that it is a totally safe paint to use and that it can be mixed with water. I just watched the video instruction for mixing Safe Paint--the Milk Paint for walls-- and I love the fact that the demonstrator mixes the paint in the kitchen with tap water and a hand mixer! It makes me want to get every color they offer and start playing with the paints myself for some of my own artwork. But, back to the kitchen...

After looking at the color palette, Rich and I landed on a combination of Buttermilk and Soldier Blue, with the Buttermilk being the basic color, and the blue on the raised panels of our drawers and cabinet doors. At this point, he figured it would be better to use paints directly from the bag and mix them up as needed, rather than work with a custom mixed shade. The reasoning behind this decision was very practical: going back and retouching parts that would certainly  get scuffed in the process of building the kitchen would present a serious challenge if one were to attempt to recreate a blended color. Better to save the mixing for the added details down the road.

With base colors all set. Rich began the tedious work of painting what was here in the house, then returning home at night to his workshop to paint the drawer fronts and cabinets doors.

I still had a sink hooked up and water in the kitchen!

You can see the subtle difference between the old pale stained white birch and the Buttermilk paint.

Mixing more paint.

Coming up soon on the blog? The hunt for the perfect counter surface. We are about to find ourselves stoned, but only in the best (and legal) sense!

Comments

[MaryZ]

My daughter and I were at Home Depot last night picking colors for my cabinets--something like variations on the light cream. Under the viewing lights at the store, the samples had variations. Now, taped up on the cabinets, they all look about the same!

What prep did you do before painting? Sanding? Primer? This is going to be my daughter's summer job. Your project has inspired me--but nowhere near as creative.

[Barbara Johansen Newman]

Mary, Rich discovered that the paints were recently improved to go right onto smooth surfaces. He may have done a slight and light sanding, but nothing more. The only places we ran into issues was near the stove and other small places where there was some grease build-up. he used a touch f acetone--not much-to get rid of that, but some Fantastic might also work. He used not primer whatsoever.

They dry very matt. If you were to use them, I would suggest sealing them with some water based polyurethane. I think that is what Rick will do when the project is done.

[Anne Thibeau]

I just wanted to clarify about the milk paint. We actually introduced a second formula not too long ago, called SafePaint (to differentiate it from our Old Fashioned formula). SafePaint is also a milk paint, that we developed for walls and other non-porous surfaces that the original formula does not adhere to very well (the original wants a porous surface to adhere to).
Looking forward to seeing more photos!!

[Barbara Johansen Newman]

Anne, thanks so much for the additional info! If I wanted to use the paint on assorted mixed media pieces, would you recommend the Safe Paint? I am eager to play with it!

I'll be posted more in a few days. I 'll make sure to share a link when I do.

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by!

[Barbara Johansen Newman]

CORRECTION: I think I have to correct myself in the blog post above. As I look more closely at the paint, I think Rich used the "Slate" against the Buttermilk, and not the Soldier Blue.