It's gorgeous already. What's throwing everything off is the wall color. Get a color consultant to help you out since the greenish wall color doesn't harmonize at all with the floor. Pull a white from the floor and countertops, and you'll like it better. Get really wonderful counter stools. Look at this. It's the first kitchen I thought of when I saw yours:

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Don’t buy this. Multifamily buildings are twice as hard to change and twice as expensive too.

Thank you housegal200 !!

I like your pictures a lot better, they are stunning.

I am indeed painting the entire place in "alabaster white". Thank you for the recommendation also. What I don't like the most is the arches on the doors.

Happy Friday R B ,

Not sure about the corner bevel thing prohibiting door placement. The doors themselves seem to be pillowcut, which is a style thing not a functional thing. Changing cabinets to white & adding glass doors with simple lite-cuts (if any) would be more contemporary for sure.

The corners that look crazy are the ones on the individual cabinet units. Those are highly stylized which makes extending them to the top pretty tough. You could remove the crown & paint them - a cabinet maker would want to take them off the wall which at that point, how much more do new cabinets really cost in comparison?

Yes - you could probably get away with painting them all in place. From there, replace the hardware, change the backsplash and paint the room. Those are the least intrusive options. A level up from there without major construction would be changing out that counter top.

You mention another thing in your post that might be the most important decision of all. Are you planning to keep the house or sell it? If you want to sell it inside a 3 years, why put a dime into it? If you want to keep it for 10 years, get it close to your dream home as possible. A realtor can advise on you on changes to sell, where as a designer / architect can advise on changes for you to keep it.

Hope that helps. If you'd like to talk more, we give every project a free 15 min. strategy session - hit us up.

-frank

I also would be clear as to what my intentions were before I did a thing to your kitchen. Your kitchen is not a shambles or dysfunctional - it is just not your taste. It's not my taste either but the kitchen you put in - especially if the changes are done cheaply and quickly wouldn't necessarily be my taste either.

With the exception of the paint, there really isn't anything I see that would be cheap and wouldn't steam roll into a bunch of other issues - I don't like the tile and would replace it with hardwood in dining area and kitchen but that's a major expense. I don't like the choice of granite but replacing the counter top is not cheap and chances are whatever you choose wouldn't be what a potential buyer would pick anyway. I don't like the door styles - painting them the ubiquitous gray or white wouldn't make me like them more - in fact they would make me like them less since at least in wood they are fairly classic. Also anything other than a factory finish is not as sturdy as the original wood stain - in five years the wood doors you have will still look in good shape whereas the painted doors won't - and professionally painting them isn't cheap either.

M Miller , thank you! I agree with you! Appreciate your directness :). Also your comment about the up and down, I had not realized that was something that bothered me also. You are probably right about living with the kitchen for a while and get a better feel for it.

Build Beautiful thank you also. Right now I am planning to keep it more than 3 years, not sure about 10 years, too far for me to think.

I don't like that green paint, it's all thru out the house. Will paint the entire house. Going over there to take another look i a week Will see how I feel then.

Thank you so much for your support. I will indeed hang out here more!!!

Thank you also Helen .

I have decided to indeed move in without doing the kitchen and see how best to change it as I live with it.

I did decide to no do Alabaster white but a light grey.

Thank you all for your feedback and support!

I can’t really see the colors in your granite, but I don’t think that light grey is the best choice with your floors. Perhaps you should reconsider a white- and there are many- for the walls. Good luck, and please post pics after painting.

BTW, you’ve received a lot of good advice on this site.

I think you need to go more beige, not grey.

Grey is not the trendy color it has been in the past. People are gravitating back to good old white, injecting color with accessories, fabrics, textiles...

Gray walls would not work with your floors, counters or cabinets. Cream is your best bet. Benjamin Moore will send you sample paint squares about 8"x9" that you can put on your wall to see how the color works. Or buy the small pint-cans of a paint color that interests you and paint a bit on the wall to experiment. Also the Benjamin Moore website has a colorizer screen where you can see the different paint colors.

Thanks so much for all the advise!

What about going with just plain white walls? Would that work?

Ha ha. No such thing as plain white. But I think a warmer white would be more in line with the undertones in your kitchen.

I went with a Dunn Edwards white called Milk Moustache which was on the advice of my decorator. She also ad two alternatives. When I went to the website of DE and explored whites, my head exploded with choices. I went with her recommendation and am happy. I suspect I would have been equally happy with the other two as well.

The only thing we would do since you're only going to be in the home for a few years is paint the walls and the moulding. You don't need to redo the kitchen if you're going to sell it within two years. We think painting will do the trick for now.

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