The Twice Remembered Cottage

I t took quite a little while for me to decide what kind of backsplash to use for the Twice Remembered kitchen. With cottage and/or farmhouse style, there are so many options! I considered beadboard - a classic choice! But I knew that in the future, I would be using beadboard on the walls throughout the entire house, so I wanted to use something a little different for the backsplash. I also thought about small square mosaic tiles, subway tiles, or even antique ceiling tin. In the end, though, I decided to go with thin brick pavers.

I get a lot of questions about these thin brick pavers. I found them at Lowes a couple of years ago. They were exact replicas of old bricks and were about .50 each. However, I have not been able to find these bricks at Lowes for quite a while now. If anyone has any information on where to find them, please do let me know! First of all, I'd love to be able to know where to direct folks who are looking for them, and second of all...I need some more thin bricks for the the faux fireplace we'll be doing in the dining room down the road. I sure wish I would have picked up an extra box when they were in stock. Little did I know!

Even painted, the bricks reveal a lot of texture.

Though I've done a little tile work back in my pre-cottage days, I wasn't up to renting a wet saw to cut the brick, and I was a little nervous about attempting some of the more detailed cuts that were required. So we decided to hire a friend for the install. I wasn't here when he did the job, but he used some kind of thick, glue-like mastic {not cement-like mortar} to apply the pavers right on top of the existing drywall.

When the glue was set and cured, I grouted the brick with sanded grout. Just to see what it would look like, I smeared a lot of the grout over the surface of the pavers and really liked the result.

But whenever I had to clean the backsplash, some of the grout on the surface would come off. I knew that I really needed to paint the backsplash for a more durable finish.

I thought that I would still like to see the bricks distress a bit - with the paint rubbed off here and there with some of the brick peeking through... so I attempted to take some of the paint off by sanding and chemicals {ugh! That was a mess and very hard to do!}

Still, I wasn't crazy with the result. It seemed too contrived and busy with the pattern in my countertop. In the end, I decided to just paint it a nice, crisp white. The paint I used was a kitchen paint by Behr that is somewhere between a satin and semi-gloss - Sateen Lustre. I am very pleased with how it turned out and it's super easy to keep clean.

If you are looking for a way to add some cottage or farmhouse appeal to your kitchen...and if you can find these bricks, I think you, too, will be happy with how they dress up your backsplash!

Coming up in Part 4 - Tung and Groove Pine Ceiling

{Did you miss Part 2 of Transformation of a Cottage Kitchen?: Check out Part 2: Antique / Farmhouse Style Red Cabinet Makeover

If you enjoyed reading about this project, please take a moment to rate it for a contest I've entered. Just scroll to the bottom where it says "rollover to rate this" and click on a star - 5 stars being the highest rating and 1 star being the lowest. I am so grateful to all those that have rated my spaces so far - Thank you!

I'm linking up at DIY Day this week!

Kitchen cabinetry. Really, your kitchen cabinetry can be considered one of the major furniture pieces of your home and, to say the least, You'll be amazed at how easily your old cabinets can be transformed into something new and beautiful!the focal point of your kitchen. But what do you do if you have boring and basic cabinets and don't want to {or can't afford to} rip them out and replace them entirely? I'd like to share with you how we changed the look and feel of our cabinets, and therefore, the look and feel of our entire kitchen. In our case, we were stuck with builder basic oak cabinets. On one hand, we were very fortunate because as basic as they were, they were good, solid wood cabinets - except for the sides and interior, which were made of some kind of cheap, composite material.

I present to you our kitchen before our cabinet makeover began:

First things first...off with the cabinet doors!

Here is what the sides of our cabinets looked like. {You can see that I did a test run of the red paint I was contemplating.}

To begin our cabinet transformation, we added beadboard to to the sides of the cabinetry. The face of the cabinets extended out past the sides just a bit, which created a recessed space that the beadboard fit into perfectly.

We added a panel to the bottom of the cabinets which housed our wiring for the undercabinet lighting.

Next we added some trim to the bottom of the cabinet....

And then crown moulding to the top...

Under the crown moulding, we added some decorative rope moulding.

One whole cabinet trimmed out and primed! Now the rest of the cabinets to go!

{Ugh! What a mess it was there for a while!}

Finally, the rest of the cabinets primed and one whole cabinet completely finished painting - a foregleam of what was to come!

Little did I know that this was the first of many, many coats of red paint...

The doors were degreased, sanded, primed...

And painted, painted, painted, painted, and painted!

Then, the edges were sanded just a bit for a distressed look.

Oh, and then there were the drawers! Thank goodness there were only six!

The insides of all the cabinets were primed and painted as well. I applied wallpaper for lining, and protected it with several layers of clear polyeurothane.

The wallpaper lining adds some color and charm to the inside of the cabinets, don't you think? In the future, I may use pages of old cookbooks to line the shelves. I need to grow my collection of old cookbooks first...

Here are a few closeups of the finished cabinet makeover, starting with the sides. Looks much better than the faux wood grain that was there to begin with!

Eventually, we added a brick paver backsplash and a new countertop.

It's amazing what a little extra trim and paint can do for kitchen cabinets! Big bang for very few bucks!

So before you rip out those old cabinets and replace them with brand new, why not see if you can change them completely by adding some pretty trim mouldings and then painting them a new color? Even if you can't add the trim yourself, it would still be less expensive {as opposed to spending thousands for new cabinets} to hire a carpenter for a day to do the wood work. You'll be amazed at how easily your old cabinets can be transformed into something new and beautiful!

Coming up in Part 3 - The Brickpaver Backsplash

{Did you miss Part 1 of Transformation of a Cottage Kitchen?: Check out Part 1: Adding Windows and French Doors