Vintage + Retro Kitchen

I’ve shared our kitchen before so this is more of an evolution than a makeover. But since it’s been in a magazine (Is she still talking about that?! Yes. Yes, I am.) and I’ve made a few changes, I thought I’d share the full evolution and what it looks like today. In real life.

When we moved in:

The old island actually ended up becoming an industrial coffee table and has since been sold.

Here it is after the reno (you can read more about that here):

The breakfast nook before:

(ha! all the old watermarks!)

Breakfast nook after:

I really loved this version of the kitchen but at some point I felt like I wanted a little bit more of a retro vibe. OH! Yeah! It was the exact point when I found this retro dinette set on the side of the road in Nashville for $50 bucks.

The old kitchen table and chairs got moved down to the craft room and the breakfast nook went from this:

to this:

I scrubbed the rust off of the chrome on the table, painted the upholstery and made the diner inspired chalkboard. I made the curtains from bleached drop cloth and added some vintage fabric of my grandmothers that I had left over after making this dress. So that’s basically the view in the mag, except there are fresh blooms and a massive bowl of plantains. Those old yellow farm animal frames in the breakfast nook found their way to the living room gallery wall with new art.

Since the magazine has come out, I’ve made a few more changes in here. I painted the island and removed the curtains from the above the sink and replaced them with a vintage window similar to the ones hanging in the living room windows.

The combo of removing the curtains and painting the island has made this space so much brighter.

I was pretty hesitant about painting it but I’m glad I did. I thought really hard about doing some kind of crazy lemon-citron color but the more I thought about it, the more I just didn’t think I could handle it on a daily basis.

I found the vintage file cabinet and medical trays while digging around in here. I gave the file cabinet a couple coats of clear high gloss before stuffing all of my family recipes inside and the medical trays hold our kitchen dishtowels.

Also, I hate to sweep. See Exhibit A, above.

So, just some minor changes since the magazine has come out but a few more since I last shared the kitchen reno with ya. But, ya know, just for Pinterest’s sake, lets pretend like this is the big-makeover-reveal-before-and-after:

I have bunch of projects and room makeovers that I am excited to share and hoping to stay on track with the weekly posts. When Hubs recently went out of town, I binged on DIY. Seriously. I didn’t have to feed or cleanup after anyone, including myself, so I took full advantage and painted the kitchen island, painted our master headboard, hung the vintage window, painted the 1/2 bath, installed new pendants in the bathroom, did a lil’ wall texturing, hung three gallery walls in three different rooms and redid the gallery in the stairwell. I also repainted our patio furniture, did a fancy “light project” on our deck with some copper pipe, created a little outdoor space on the side of the house and made lots of DIY art. I feel like I’m missing something…. He was gone for 6 days.  I don’t know balance, I only know chill or no chill and I ended up on full-blast-no-chill and hurt myself. I am really trying to create a balance in my life and treat my body better, so I’ll be takin’ ‘er easy on the projects and physical labor for a while and just keep sharing all the stuff I did on my DIY-binge.

I might even paint my nails.