A happy birthday cheer goes out to the resident cats who were born one year ago today! These boys came to live with Asher and me last fall, not long after we moved into the cottage. Since then they’ve given us all sorts of interesting/comical/annoying/smelly experiences. Ash and I agree, this place would definitely be boring without them! I thought I’d share a few pictures in honor of their special day : )
FYI – Maverick is more black with white and Crash is more white than black! 
As I suspected last night, the first coat of turquoise paint was much darker than I had in mind. So I started today day with adding a bit of white paint to the original color to create a softer shade. Now it’s perfect!
It didn’t take long for me to decide the drawer/cabinet pulls needed to be black. I’d thought about doing this during the original paint job last fall but I had plenty of painting on my plate back then so I left them as they were. With the new paint they just looked wrong- so tonight, they’re black!
Covering the shelves with white contact paper was the single best thing I could have done. I’m astounded by how much brighter the cabinet space looks now! This simple change would probably have been sufficient to brighten the original green. Oh well, the new color is so much better : )
I can’t get the color right to make the picture match the real deal. You’ll just have to stop by and see for yourself!
The white dishes stand out so much more now than they did before! The soft turquoise against ultra-white is just so pleasing to the eye.
And notice that in the lower right? What? There’s nothing there? That’s right, because I am going microwave-free, baby! I’ve thought about doing this for years and what better time than when I’m already making a fresh start? I’ll be honest, in the end it was that extra counter space that really spoke to me. In a kitchen this small, you need all of it that you can get! There will be a toaster oven in that space eventually, but it will still feel so much less cluttered than it did before. Yey for that!
I’m still trying to figure out how to paint the perfect circle on a wall. All day long I was thinking of all sorts of options to solve this particular problem but I kept coming back to me painting it painstakingly slowly by trembling hand. Currently my idea is to put a lime green circle inside of this one, so apparently I’ll get lots of practice at this. You’ll know how I did by whether or not the next pictures feature nice straight squares in this space!!!
Of note, in this photo you can see the difference between the original color (the strip around the outside of the circle) and the final shade (center of the circle.)
It seems hard to believe when I look around me now, but the first time I saw this little house that I love so much, I wasn’t sure I could live here. The dark colors on walls, floor & ceiling made the little house feel a lot smaller than it is and created an almost cavernous space. Since I work from home and spend a lot of time here, it’s pretty important to me that I am inspired by and very comfortable in the place I call home. And as a girl who loathes the long, dismal days of winter, I knew living in a space that dark would probably be the death of me! Fortunately I’m blessed with great landlords who gave me free reign to make this home a comfortable place for Asher and me. The kitchen was the first room I tackled the day I got the key.
I enjoy documenting the stages of progress so of course I’ve documented the transformation of every room in the house. When people see these photos they always remark that I must’ve had such vision to see the room above in the one pictured below. Honestly, I didn’t have any vision at all when I started- the whole project really just evolved over the course of working on it. All I knew was that it needed to be lighter and brighter, and made to feel bigger than it is!
This is what it looked like the first time I went inside, while the previous tenant was still calling it home.
October 27,2008 – The day I got the key and got my butt to work!
There’s nothing like crisp white for brightening a dark space. I wanted to use a fun color too, but decided the floor was the best place for that this time! I also decided right away to remove the kitchen cabinet doors to create some depth. Painting the interior of the cabinets the same color as the floor injected a little pizazz into the kitchen and was a great way to tie the two spaces together .
Of course I decided after I put all the dishes in their places that the wood cabinet trim was too dark and had to go. Bring on the white paint!
That pieced together window trim was so miss-matched & crooked that it drove my balance- oriented eye crazy every time I looked at it! It was soon replaced : )
11.4.008 –nine days after getting the key. We moved in on October 31st before I was even close to being done.
Almost there, but what to do with the kitchen floor? I already had black & white floor paint so naturally a checkerboard pattern was next on the agenda! I always wanted a kitchen with a checker board floor!
2.009 – Sometimes the finishing touches take awhile! Floor trim has been laid (& window trim replaced!)- it’s finally done!
Here’s what the space looked like today. I decided a few days ago that I was ready to get creative and take things to the next level. Time to introduce a new color to the scheme! The lime green is great on the floor but often seems pretty dark inside the cabinets. (Part of this is a lighting issue… if you have any clever suggestions for a more even distributed lighting idea I’d love to hear them! The problem is there is only a pull string socket over the sink- no switches in the kitchen!) I’ve also always wanted to apply some sort of trim over the top of the cabinets to cover/finish that two inch space between it and the ceiling. Eliminating dark shadows is key to brightening up a room!
Of note, the floral fabric on the pillow was the original inspiration for the color scheme for this space. It was first purchased to be used on a custom-made bag I gave as a gift to my friend Naomi last fall. I fell in love with that fabric so much that one morning before we moved, I woke up with the thought that I needed to use it for decorating the new house. It was from there that the lime green floor evolved!
Most people’s bedrooms don’t look directly into their kitchen, but this is a very small, quirky house and this is what I see from my bed every morning when I wake up. It was from this vantage point that I decided the shelves needed to be white to help brighten the cupboard space even more. I also thought it might cool to have some fun with color in the space where the clock hangs!
Getting to work.
Caulking is done, taping is done, trim piece is in place! It looks so much better! Now I need to figure out something for that end piece too… hmmm….
Introducing the new color! I am blessed/cursed with a ridiculously sensitive sense of color acuity. Selecting the exact paint color I have in mind usually takes me about ten seconds after stepping up to a group of color samples. Just like the day I found the lime color last fall I immediately zeroed in on this shade. (It’s name sealed the deal- “Half Moon Bay”-the name of my favorite beach on Vancouver Island!) I found a little soap dish in this color at the Goodwill last week that made me want this color in my house…. luckily it goes just right with the color scheme on pillow fabric too!
One coat.
Two coats! Hmmm… a little darker & more bold than I anticipated!
I want the turquoise & lime to flow together, through out the space, so I thought it might look cool to showcase the sun clock in a circle featuring both colors. Until I tried to paint a circle, that is. Now I think I’m going to sleep on this idea and see what comes to me.
That’s enough work for today… stay tuned for the remaining steps and finished result- who knows how it will turn out?! : )
I *thought* the guy who visited last week seemed a little big to be our friend from last spring! I’m pretty sure THIS is the real Friendly, but who knows? Could be his brother, could be his cousin… Maybe I should just make a declaration that all the male deer who wander through this place are named Friendly : )
Not sure what the heck that thing hanging from his antler is, but he’s busy munching on the Asian pear I gave him!
This evening I returned from the grocery store to find the resident stag taking a rest in the back yard. He used to come by almost daily a few months ago- so familiar with me he was then that he even ate apple slices from my fingers a few times! That experience earned him the name “Friendly.” We haven’t seen him around here all summer so it was a nice surprise to see how big he’s gotten – I’m sure from a summer of munching in every garden on Samish Hill ; ) I know for certain he had a field day with my neighbor Mike’s pole beans – the other day Mike confessed to calling him something a lot less friendly : )
Here’s a shot of Friendly taken at the end of May when he first started stopping by. He’s grown a fair amount since then – especially his antlers!
I’ve been procrastinating on harvesting the potato plants in the back yard because I’ve not been quite ready for the major hole in the garden doing so would create. I decided I’d save the chore for the arrival of my best friend Erin and her two oldest kids Andrew & McKenna, who came to visit from the east side of the mountains for the weekend. With most plants in the garden you see what you're getting as the plant grows, but with root crops like potatoes it’s a big surprise! We had fun digging in the dirt to make sure we found all the little golden treasures. I made pan fried fingerlings for breakfast and everyone agreed they were simply delicious!
Photo Credit : Auntie Erin
Photo Credit : Auntie Erin
