A kitchen makeover in the offing.

We are putting a lot of house projects and furniture purchases off until we get our tax credit, but we do have a few things we'd like to accomplish sooner. When my in-laws (Joan and Mike) offered to pitch in on a weekend project when they come to visit in August, we narrowed down our projects to a few possibilities:

• Kitchen makeover. Although maybe one day, in some sunny, distant future in which we have lots of extra cash and time on our hands, we'd love to completely redo the kitchen with new countertops, cabinets, appliances, etc., in reality there's absolutely nothing wrong with what we have now. But one issue we're having is that the place seems very dark all the time, partly due to the fact that both windows face the shady backyard. So for now, painting the dark wood cabinets a lighter color is our solution.
• Garden touch-up. The garden undeniably needs some help. Lots of weeds and unknown stuff to take out and replace with some nice, friendly perennials. I have more ambitious plans, but in the near future I just want to replace the existing weedy flowerbeds with something more pleasing.
• Sunroom floor redo. We ripped up a corner of the carpet to reveal what appears to be concrete. After reading about the possibilities for staining or painting a concrete sunroom floor on this blog, we immediately adopted it as one of our near future to-dos.
• Wallpaper removal/painting. The living and dining rooms need serious help. The wallpaper choices are better in these two rooms than in the master bedroom, but I'm just not a wallpaper fan. I am looking forward to having a clean, uniform look to the walls. The master bedroom, even though it is worse, can wait.

So, after throwing different ideas around, our frontrunner for the August project is...the kitchen cabinets. We decided to concentrate mostly on indoor projects to help prepare the house to receive Thanksgiving guests, so it makes sense that the kitchen would receive some attention. The dining room is the obvious next choice. Hurry up, tax credit!

Here is a current picture of the kitchen.

Actually the camera's flash makes it look better than it is. See, everything's perfectly good! Just imagine that it's a little dimmer than this and you'll have our issue. I think a few coats of a nice light green, as well as new hardware, will do wonders. At least I hope it will. Here is my inspiration:

                                                    Picture courtesy of Better Homes and Gardens.

I especially noticed that the floor looks similar to ours, and that the green works not only with silvery/gray stainless steel, but also with yellowish/tan shades as well. We don't have stainless steel appliances now, but we might someday. We thought about painting the cabinets white, but with with the white tiles and off-white counters, we worried it would be a bit much. Another idea that I am really digging about this picture is the open cabinets. We might try removing the doors from one of the cabinets and storing all the pretty things there for show. Thanks a MILLION to Steph for sending me this link! Steph also gave us the idea of doing a bi-color thing with the cabinets, which we are definitely considering.

The only other thing to figure out is what color should the wall be in the breakfast nook? Very little actual wall in the kitchen itself, but we might give the breakfast nook a new coat of paint while we're at it. Needs some more thought, but the idea is definitely taking shape.