Our kitchen cabinets are solid wood and, though the color is not my style, they are beautiful. I've toyed with the idea of painting them. However, I hate to paint solid wood. The island, on the other hand, is wrapped in veneer. I knew I was going to do something with it, but it took me some time to decide what. Although the room gets a lot of light, the cabinets and the black countertops keep it dark.
After trimming my kitchen window with my favorite yellow paint (Benjamin Moore's Lemon Meringue), I thought that would be the perfect color for the island. The first thing I had to do was all the prep work. I pulled off all the existing trim and corbels. Then I sanded and cleaned the veneer.
Then it was time for paint. This took the largest amount of time of the entire project. I love what paint does to a project but I hate how long it takes. Most of my day was spent waiting (not very patiently) for paint to dry.
It did take me quite a lot of measuring to get all of the trim work correct. That is my biggest weakness. I am proud to say that I only had to redo one piece. Thankfully, I had some extra from another project because the piece I got wrong was too short. I also ended up with a very odd section toward the front of the island where the wood trim was meeting up with the yellow trim.
That's a corner trim piece that wraps around to the front. I didn't want to take it off because it belongs on the front. Now that the project is over and I'm rethinking it, I would have pulled that piece, cut it down the middle and then reattached it so that it only showed in the front. However, at this stage, I already cut the yellow trim for this section on both sides and I didn't have any more extra trim. It was tough, but I ended up cutting a tiny piece to fit in there. I have more painting to do, along with caulking so I'm hoping that after a few coats of paint, it will blend in.
The other thought I had was that, had I envisioned this ahead of time, I could have just cut a corner of the trim work on this piece to fit exactly like the two pieces turned out. But, again, the piece was already cut and I didn't want to go buy more trim.
Despite the issues, I am so happy with how this project turned out! At first, I was worried that it was too much yellow but the longer I sit here, the happier I am with the result.
Time for the next project! Now where's my wood glue?
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