Repaint!

We just weren’t happy with our initial color choice on this floor-to-ceiling cabinet that sits at the back of our kitchen.

Even though our kitchen cabinets are white and our quartz countertops a creamy white, we have lots of pops of warm walnut open shelving and putty grey veining in the quartz that helps keep the kitchen from looking too sterile and cold.

But, even though we tried to keep things light by choosing white for this substantial piece, it took all the focus in the room. It was so bright and so white, that it started to annoy me.

With baseboards left to caulk and paint and a bunch of other punch list items staring us down, repainting the entire cabinet just seemed like a distant chore nobody wanted to do.

But, the cabinet sits directly in front of the island, so it taunted me every time I used our cooktop. One day, somewhere in the middle of boiling pasta and making sauce, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore and began looking at color swatches.

I had already purchased a gallon of paint for our guest bedroom upstairs and when I put those swatches on the wall to see if I liked it up there, something clicked.

“I think it’s the perfect color for our kitchen utility cabinets!” I said to no one in particular. (I was definitely excited.) Could it possibly be an exact match of the veining in our quartz? Why, yes, it could, as a matter of fact.

The color, Benjamin Moore’s Chelsea Grey, is a muddy warm grey and it was either going to be perfect or an unmitigated disaster.

Spoiler alert…

It is perfect. A testament to always waiting until you get the second coat on, if I’m being honest, after the first coat I thought we had made a big mistake.

The undertones were greenish and dull. But, the second coat brought the whole thing to life and we couldn’t be happier!

The color really picks up the veining in our countertops and adds a whole other level of warmth to the room.

Here’s to second chances!