Food & Drink

Before & After: A “Catastrophic” Kitchen Gets a Stunning Redo with a DIY Faux Cement Wall

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In terms of styling small kitchens, less is often more. When you might have restricted area, shade, end, and format selections can all assist a kitchen really feel extra streamlined — and far bigger than it truly is.

In house owner Laura Wlasenkov’s tiny kitchen, virtually all the present options had been working in opposition to the area. “The higher cupboards had been brilliant yellow,” Laura says. “The remaining had been white and destroyed. The sink was tremendous small and uncomfortable. There was an area for the fridge, and ours didn’t match. The backsplash was beige with inexperienced flowers. It was an uncoordinated mess.”

Along with being uncoordinated, it was additionally simply uncomfortable. “There was actually no place to cook dinner,” Laura says of the earlier than, the place counter and sink area had been severely missing. And whereas colourful cupboards and classic tile backsplashes may be charming in an older kitchen, in the event that they’re not correctly cared for or restored, they will make a small kitchen really feel overwhelming with shade and sample — and simply overwhelmingly outdated.

“The very first thing I did was paint all of the backsplash and partitions white,” Laura says of her four-year mission to enhance her kitchen. “I wanted to see a minimum of fewer colours.” In a small kitchen, sticking to a easy shade scheme — comparable to black, white, and grey —can instantly make it really feel extra trendy and extra organized.

Subsequent, Laura modified the sink, faucet, cupboards, and counters, sticking to shades of black, white, and grey. Laura opted for black decrease cupboards and white uppers — a dependable design trick for retaining an open, ethereal really feel up high with out sacrificing storage. She additionally added a wooden bar, excellent for further prep area and additional seating. Behind the bar is a shocking fake cement wall Laura created with paint.

“That wall was fully tiled, and I didn’t prefer it in any respect, Laura says. “It was painted white just like the backsplash, however I felt like I used to be in a butcher’s store.” She determined to make use of spackling paste to stage the grout and tile and make it seem like a standard wall. “The method was prolonged and there was numerous sanding concerned,” she says.

After smoothing it out, she started priming it to color. “I already had the gallery wall imaginative and prescient in my head, however as I used to be making use of the primer (after all of the sanding), I believed it may look very cool if I discovered a solution to make it seem like cement,” she says.

To de-sterilize the area and add some heat and texture, she started to combine shades of grey. First, Laura experimented with sponge portray to get the cement look, however she wasn’t happy with the end result. To create the ultimate look, she painted the entire wall a medium grey, then took her curler and painted barely lighter and darker shades over high “in each route potential,” giving the wall the marginally uneven, light-catching really feel of cement.

“The paint begins to combine in a manner that the totally different shades are nonetheless seen, nevertheless it’s very refined,” Laura says. She had all the supplies at house for her DIY, so she didn’t spend a cent, however paint and rollers are an inexpensive (and fewer everlasting) answer for any DIYer trying to get the economic search for much less.

“I really like that it feels very me and never like another kitchen I’ve seen,” Laura says of her accomplished kitchen, with its simplified shade scheme and DIY characteristic wall. “It’s comfy to cook dinner in, and now I really like spending time there.”

Sarah Everett

Production Assistant

Sarah is Residence Remedy’s manufacturing assistant. She just lately accomplished her MA in journalism on the College of Missouri and has a bachelor’s diploma in journalism from Belmont College. Previous writing and modifying stops embody HGTV Journal, Nashville Arts Journal, and a number of other retailers native to her hometown, Columbia, Missouri.

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