As you might have noticed in the "before" kitchen photos, our house had CRAZY paint colors when we bought it. I'm honestly not sure why anyone would choose these. Almost everyone that walked in commented on the color scheme. Here is a rough illustration of the paint colors that were here. I think they were actually worse than these, but they're pretty close:


All of these colors were packed into about 1,000 sq ft! Note that the pink in the hall bath includes pink tiles and pink walls.

The lighter blue bedroom was actually a somewhat acceptable color, but we wanted everything to be light, bright and neutral. As I've mentioned, our house is small! Light, neutral colors open up the space. Dark, crazy colors make it look even smaller and cave-like.

For a while, I was pretty stressed about picking all new paint colors. In the rentals I've lived in throughout the years, I've only painted 3 rooms: my bedroom and 2 separate dens. That was easy and not really that big of a commitment. I was only going to live there for a year and it was only a rental. (Side note - in the bedroom I painted and one of the dens, both were hideous shades of gold before I painted them. Another terrible color choice.) Choosing new paint colors for a whole house seemed a little overwhelming! I didn't want to spend a bunch of time painting only to hate the colors and have to paint over them.

Of course, I consulted Pinterest and Google for advice on picking paint colors and made kind of a big deal about it. Then, it was time to paint the guest bedroom. William and I were at Lowe's and I pretty much just decided the paint color on whim, based only on swatches in the store. (I'm so glad I spent all that time researching color schemes!) For the den, kitchen, and dining room, I did spend a little more time and bought samples before painting everything.  I definitely recommend doing this - they are only about $3 and actually contain a good bit of paint. (Tip: Sample cans are also perfect for touch ups - they are easy to open and close. I'll probably end up buying another sample of all the paint colors we chose just for that purpose.) After painting some of each sample on the wall, were able to pick 2 colors - Notre Dame and Dove's Cry, both by Valspar.  Notre Dame is in the den and Dove's Cry is in the dining room, kitchen, and hallway. They are all kind of connected, so it made sense to paint them the same color. Here's our new color scheme, minus the master bathroom, since that hasn't been decided:

New color scheme

What do you think? The top 3 are already in the house and they look SO much better! We have already gotten quite a few compliments on them. I'm not sure if this is because people actually like them or just because it looks SO much better than it did before.   I had been dreaming about a grey den - I wanted something neutral, but wanted to break out of the tan colors. So many colors look good with grey - coral, navy, mint, yellow, and more - and I'm having a hard time choosing decor and furniture!  For the hall bath, we are thinking about doing beadboard around the bottom half, so it would be half white and half blue.  The master color is one we used on our previous rental's den and we loved it.

Choosing all new paint colors for an entire house can be a challenge, but my advice is: don't over think it, buy samples, and go with light, neutral colors no matter the size of your house. Also, be sure to go with what you like! I also recommend priming the walls first if you have really dark colors, even if you buy a "paint and primer." The color will come out differently than you thought it would if you don't! On light colored walls, I skip the priming.

I'll update again once we've painted some more rooms! The master bedroom will be next - we've already painted the pink walls in the bathroom, but the pink tiles are still there.

So far, the kitchen has by far been the biggest and most time-consuming project we've worked on. When we came to look at the house, it was small, dark, and not laid out very well.  We actually all stood there wondering where all the appliances were supposed to go. (Many times, foreclosed houses have no appliances in them when you buy them, or bottom-of-the-line new appliances installed by the bank.)  There was no dishwasher ever installed, but there was also no space to put both an oven and a refrigerator.

I don't have a true "before" picture to share right now. I may be able to track one down to share later, but I do have a lot of in-progress photos.  Almost right away, we knew we needed to tear down some walls. The kitchen and dining room are right beside each other, and before there was just a small doorway between the two.  We've knocked down the wall separating them completely. We are rebuilding part of it as a refrigerator nook, and the other side will be open, with a counter separating the rooms.  This will give us storage space and an extra place to eat and prepare food. It also really opens up the house!

You're seeing it correctly. The cabinets are painted 3 different colors.

At the very beginning, we were thinking about saving the cabinets - obviously they needed a paint job. After seeing the faulty plumbing and the water damage it had caused, we decided to just take it all out.



After putting a few holes in the wall, we decided to just go ahead and also take down the whole wall. (You might notice a pattern emerging here...) In retrospect, I guess we could have actually just patched it and left it, but I am actually glad we took the time to just take it down and replace. The wall was filled with some nasty stuff (rat poop, decades old razors) and obviously was not very strong. I don't think I would have trusted our new cabinets to be held up properly with this wall!



This area had a little L-shaped cabinet configuration. I can't quite remember, but I think they were actually all the same color! Either way, we knew we wanted to open up this space so we started tearing up the wall almost immediately. We did it on a whim and all we had was a mini crowbar, but that did the job! We were just thankful that it was not plaster.


                       

You may be noticing the crazy color scheme here. Dark green in the hallway to the left, dark red cabinet, bright orange kitchen, a lighter, but still bold, green in the dining room to the right

Here you can see a glimpse of the base cabinets and the counter tops. Again, multicolored cabinets and drawers! Who does this?! There was an ugly peg board over the old stove exhaust (see above) so we tore that out to see what was going on. As soon as we saw this brick, our minds started churning with ideas for bringing some kind of exposed brick into the space. You never know what you'll find behind a wall (just hope it's not more rat poop!)





Next up, we started on the floors. Installing and refinishing hardwood floors warrants a whole other post, but I'll give you the summary: it's hard. We only put new hardwoods in the kitchen and part of a bedroom, both of which were small spaces, and they took much longer than we expected. That is probably our biggest lesson during this renovation: it's going to take longer than expected.

The kitchen is in much better shape these days and we have a functional gas stove, dishwasher, over-the-range microwave, new counters, new plumbing, new sink, etc. We are still working on our exposed brick shelf, the back splash, and the bar/peninsula area that is open to the dining room. More kitchen updates to come soon!