(No, you are not having deja-vu! Over the past week I’ve shared several coupons & giveaways here in order to take advantage of some rare time off my husband had and spend time together as a family. So here’s a reminder to enter this awesome giveaway and I’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow 😉 Thanks so much for reading/your support!)
You might remember how we had big plans to do some renovations and cosmetic updates to our house when we bought it almost four years ago. We started as soon as we had the key in hand, painting, laying new floors, etc. But then I got myself knocked up (hooray!) and then had hyperemesis (boo!) and then had a baby three and a half months early. And turns out, spending 5+ months in the NICU severely cuts into your home improvement budget. Or, well, all your budgets, actually. So everything has been on hold for a long time, until recently when I had the amazing opportunity to work with Glidden paint to makeover our kitchen.
Y’all, I almost cried when I got that email because let’s be honest: Our kitchen is fine and functional and having a pretty kitchen is not one of the most important things in life. But I love decorating and home improvement projects, and as soon as we laid eyes on the house I knew I wanted to update the kitchen. So thanks to Glidden, this summer I’m finally getting to tackle the kitchen and I couldn’t be more excited. What I wanted though, was a bright, happy kitchen with white cabinets. Our cabinets are builders’ grade basic oak, which look pretty orange. Okay, very orange. Like, Oompa Loompa orange. Here are some images that are the inspiration for what I want to do: 
(kitchen source 1, print by katie daisy, kitchen source 2) Yep, I want to paint the cabinets. (Click CONTINUE READING to see my before pictures + a mockup of what it might look like)
When we bought the house we were on a time crunch to get all new floors installed before we moved in. The floors in this house all needed to be replaced- they were in terrible condition. You can’t tell much in this picture but the linoleum in here had big gashes in it. So I just quickly put a neutral color on the walls that felt a little less dark than the moss green. I was pretty sure I might want a blue kitchen, but I am not sure what shade of blue. THERE ARE SO MANY BLUES TO CHOOSE FROM.
When Glidden reached out to me, they mentioned that their goal is provide a simplified palette. Basically, they’ve narrowed their paint choices to a selection that only includes colors that people love, so you’re not squinting at paint chips trying to deduce the difference between 17 shades of the same color. So I used Glidden’s color tools on My Colortopia to “paint” my kitchen online and try them out. THIS IS SO FUN. You just upload a photo of your room, choose your paint colors (and it will help you choose if you don’t know where to start), and then it “paints” your room for you. Here is the before before, taken the day we closed on our house: 
And here is what mine looked like after using the Color My Room tool: 
I played around with a bunch of different blues, and I’m still a bit undecided between the very pale blue (like the first inspiration photo) or a bolder teal-ish blue (like the second.) And then I decided I wanted to add some beadboard wainscoting so I saved a few of the images I made in MyColortopia and then photoshopped in a little faux wainscoting. Which one do you like best? 
Let us know what inspired your last home decor project in the comments section below for a chance to win a $100 gift card!
Sweepstakes Rules:
No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods: Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry. This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winner will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected. The Official Rules are available here. This sweepstakes runs from 7/1/2013 – 9/30/2013.
This post is sponsored by Glidden paint, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
