IT'S FINISHED!!

Finally!  Our kitchen no longer has the ugly green wall!

On Monday, this was on our counters.

On Tuesday, our kitchen looked like this!

We hired someone to put it in and boy, are we glad!  We went with a bone colored subway tile to match the cabinet color and keep the light feel we started with the counters going.  The kitchen looks infinitely better and we couldn’t be happier with the results!

After finishing the tile, I turned my attention to the one section of the wall that I didn’t paint.  That section in the corner of the kitchen is covered with something (particle board, sheet rock, I don't have a clue). 

Since we have a stainless fridge now, that significantly cuts down on the amount of stuff we can magnetically hang in the kitchen.  So...I thought I might paint that corner with magnetic paint.  I’d read where other people had used it with some success so I went to Home Depot and got some.

It recommended painting on 3 light coats vs 2 heavy coats.  Little did I know, that it was BLACK paint.  I immediately worried because I had planned on covering it with green and a yellow stencil! 

Needless to say, the green covered well in 2 coats, and the stencil did well over the green.

Here’s a closer look at the actual pattern.

I used Behr paint again, so if you ever need to cover a black wall in 2 coats, use Behr!  For the stencil, I traced it on the wall in pencil and then covered it with yellow.  I initially tried to paint it on using a Behr color sampler and paintbrush.  That didn’t work out so well so I just used a yellow acrylic paint pen from Hobby Lobby.  I cut both a full copy of the stencil along with 2 halves to make tracing that thing easier in the corners.

The stencil was a cheap way to add some color and character to the kitchen, but it was incredibly time consuming.  I don’t think I would ever stencil an entire wall like Jones Design Company did (which was where I got the free stencil).  I didn’t total up how long it took me to do the painting, but I had to put three coats of magnetic paint, plus two coats of green paint, plus the time it took to cut it in around the molding and that newly placed grout.  Tracing the stencil in pencil took about 45 minutes and going over with the yellow paint pen took 2.5 HOURS (I had to go over it twice to make it opaque enough over the green).  Again, cheap for a custom wallpaper look that's also magnetic (approximately $25 in paint, free stencil, $0.39 cardboard, and $5 paint pen), but time consuming for such a small piece of the kitchen.  I’ll probably end up using both of the left over paints (lots of it) elsewhere too.

With that and the completion of our tile backsplash our kitchen is now complete!  Thank God!  And it only took us 9 months…

Just a reminder, here’s a final before and after.

Before:

 After: