So sorry it's been so long since I posted last, but we were enjoying the last couple months of our summer! :) I'm still all caught up in Project Life...I'll be showing my past weeks here pretty soon. But first, I wanted to show you what I've been up to this week.
My birthday was a little over a week ago and my wonderful husband got me the Giani Granite Countertop paint for our kitchen. We've been slowly changing up our kitchen, but we're on a very fixed budget for it. Which means we've got to use what's already here. First I repainted the cabinets, and next up was the countertops.
I had researched this specific paint for the counters and heard only good reviews so I thought it would be something we could totally do to lighten up our kitchen! So here's the before and after picture!
My main reason for wanting to change it up, besides the really dark brown...was that when I painted the cabinets, I had to paint the wooden edge along the countertops white to match the cabinets. I don't know if your countertops were built that way too...but it was the strangest thing that they put a wooden edge on it to match the cabinets. It has driven me crazy ever since painting the cabinets, although I love my white cabinets! It was just that edge that drove me crazy. So the cool thing about the Giani paint is that you can paint over pretty much anything...so I was able to make my countertops look like one piece instead of a counter with an ugly trim! :)
I finished everything in less than 24 hours. It was a really easy and painless process...although I have to say I stressed out about it a lot! First step was to clean your counters with an SOS pad, then tape everything off. I added some kraft paper to the front of our dishwasher and on one of the sides to make sure I didn't drip anything on them. We decided not to paint our tile backsplash...we've got big plans for that later. :)
The first paint you put on the countertops is a black color. Ray purchased the Sicilian Sand kit for me, but all the other kits start off with the black too. After painting the counters black we almost stopped and left them like this because we liked it so much!
We painted that in the evening and let it sit overnight. Then the next morning, I got started on the part that stressed me out...the sponging of the three colors onto the countertops. I had looked at many photos of other people's countertops and you could tell that some people did a great job with this part and others didn't. So I was a little worried. I wanted it to look like real granite, not sponged on paint.
In this kit, they give you three colors, a medium brown, a lighter tan and a white color. They provide you with the sponge (that you cut into three pieces), all the rollers and all the paints. They also send you a black piece of cardboard to practice on, which I was grateful for. So after practicing, I went to work.
It took me a few minutes to figure out the technique, but then I got the hang of it and it really went pretty quickly. First I sponged on the medium brown. I wanted most of the black covered up, but left enough that you could still see it.
Then I sponged the lighter tan over that. I added the most of this color, I think. I tried to fill in most of the gaps and made sure I did a random pattern so it didn't look like I was painting in a line.
Then the white goes on last...I just did little bits of it here and there. You can see the three colors here...it's really amazing how good it looks when you get that last color on!
After letting the colors dry for 4 hours, you paint the top coat on, let that sit for 4 hours....then add another coat of the top coat. It gives it a great shine and really brought the colors out even more!
A fun shot of the bar...I love how the edges now look like a part of the countertop!
Here's a close shot so you can see the different colors and how things aren't uniform...I think that's what gives it the granite look.
And another shot of the whole kitchen put back together! I love how it lightened up the room even more!
It's such a difference from how our kitchen looked like a few months ago!
