We finally decided to bite the bullet and take the first steps on the kitchen cupboard painting journey, after having stared at these paint samples beside the stove for months and dreaming of dark coloured kitchens.
I eventually picked the sample on the left, the second darkest one, called Black Orbit by British Paints. So, I toddled down to Bunnings, announced my intention to the girl at the paint desk, and waited for the advice to start flowing. She convinced me that since kitchen cupboards get a fair bit of wear and tear, I should step out of my acrylic (i.e. water-based) paint comfort zone and enter the world of oil-based paint, since it's much stronger than water-based paints are.
So, a bit scared of what that involve but determined that my kitchen cabinets would not have flaky paint, I requested some oil-based semi-gloss paint in Black Orbit.
The problem? Well, there were several.
1) British Paints doesn't carry a semi-gloss oil-based paint, so we needed to move to Dulux and get it colour-matched, meaning it wouldn't be absolutely the same, but pretty close.
2) Black Orbit needs a 'bright white' base paint, which Bunnings only stocks in a high gloss oil-based paint, which the sales girl said "is almost offensively shiny".
Hmm. Something had to give. I didn't want to have "offensively shiny" cabinets, so my only real option was to change my mind on the colour to something that doesn't require a bright white base.
I then discovered that the slightly lighter colour than Black Orbit in the same British Paints line (Rhino Grey) fitted into that category - i.e. didn't require a bright white base.
So, biting my fingernails as I did it, I gave the go-ahead to mix Dulux paint to Rhino Grey.
And then the painting happened. More on what we were actually painting to come.
I know the colour doesn't look too bad here, but we weren't very happy with this colour. It looked very flat and boring, and a lot more blue than we were expecting.
So we took our little tin of paint back down to Bunnings and asked them to add more black to it, hoping that would bring it a bit closer to my original colour choice, Black Orbit. That was when we learnt that there is actually a limit to how much tint can be added to a tin of paint. Apparently too much tint makes the paint curdle! Who knew?!
Anyway, we added as much black as possible, and took our precious paint tin (at $95 for 4 litres, it's certainly precious!) home, and began the second, slightly darker coat.
Once it had had time to cure (oil-based paint needs heaps of time between coats, and even more to be fully cured), we took a sample upstairs into the kitchen, and stared at it.
In the photo above, the board standing up against the wall is the one we painted. The one lying down is a laminate board out of an old desk that we've been using as a temporary extra surface in the kitchen.
They look virtually exactly the same, don't they?
That was really not the look we were going for. The colour still looked way too blue, and we just couldn't bring ourselves to consider seeing the entire kitchen in that colour.
That is when I decided the colour's official name should be "Bleugh". And it was back to the drawing board - or fanned out paint chips on top of a board.
But we decided we just couldn't jump into the decision. The colour of the kitchen is going to be an extremely important decision for our house, and until we're absolutely confident, we can't bring ourselves to commit.
So Here is where we're at. Lots and LOTS of paint chips! Our selection simply wasn't wide enough last time!
And that is where we've stayed. We're $95 down on the unsuccessful Rhino Grey (it looks like the animal paint names aren't working for me anymore), but that's a lot cheaper than replacing an entire kitchen anyway, so we have to remind ourselves of that when we get upset about throwing our money down the drain on our first kitchen paint selection. We're gazing at these paint chips every time we visit the microwave, so hopefully we will make a choice that we will be much happier with!! No more rushing into a decision.
We might also move beyond Bunnings and go straight to a Dulux shop in order to be able to get a bright white base in something other than high gloss. Assuming of course that it's possible!
Here's hoping we're second time lucky!!
No comments:
Post a Comment