My current kitchen is quite literally dying piece by piece.. And to be fair it was a VAST improvement over the brown particle board, and faux marble gold and white laminate that came with the house! I still remember the salesman saying if we were going to stay in the house at least 5 years, we should get the wood cabinets instead of the cheaper ones. So apparently it could have been worse. So we did the kitchen in honey oak with navy wallpaper to go with our pfaltzgraff dishes, self-installed cheap ceramic tile on the floor, and ivory laminate counters which we upgraded with an oak edge.
I had bought unglazed tiles with the intention of hand painting them to make a backsplash that echoed the wallpaper and, blessed with the gift of procrastination and inertia, I never got around to it. Thank goodness. Choose timeless classics for the permanent items.
The cheap floor tile chipped almost immediately and was eventually replaced with hardwood to match the rest of the house, and the wallpaper was stripped. Beadboard was added to part of the kitchen walls when we added more sort-of matching cabinetry to replace a homemade banquette corner, and a pale celery green and cream became the new color scheme. I have learned, in the intervening years, that while the rhythm of a curated selection of repeated elements is an excellent design tool that adds cohesiveness to a room, a themed motif is not the way to achieve that if you want a nuanced, sophisticated, and gracious space.
All redecoration and renovation projects are spurred by something. Usually it is a dissatisfaction with either the style or function of the space or both. You HAVE to define the problems before you can find solutions. And now? Not only is this all very much NOT my style, but everything is starting to fall apart. The microwave is possessed. It is an over-the-stove model with a fan and it goes berserk if we boil water and generate any steam or use the oven at high heat, and I have to put it in timeout by unplugging it to stop the tantrum!
The ice maker and water dispenser have gone on strike more often than the French railroads. The range is on life support and at least one of the burners has to be lit by hand now. The window is the only remaining one that is original to the house and badly in need of replacement. The key is planning. In just about two weeks, I will have new counters, a new undermounted praise be big deep stainless steel sink, and a new faucet! The counters I chose are a marble look in nearly indestructible quartz.
