Hands down, the room where I spend the majority of my time in is the kitchen.

It’s where we share our meals, visit with friends and family, process hundreds of animals to fill our freezers, can, prep, and preserve our food, and is essentially the heart of our humble home.

But as central of a space as it is in our lives, it’s a rather small space.

This is not a complaint. I’ve shared previously the love that I have for my home, small though it may be.

With the exception of wishing I had room for a larger table, I’m content for the time being with what I have. While we have eventual plans for adding on to our house which will allow for a kitchen expansion, I know that that will not be happening in the near future.

Therefore, it was time to finally break down and give this beloved small space a much needed makeover. And right now- just a couple weeks away from the start of our maple syrup season and thus the start of months of all the hard work and time that goes into spring livestock and gardens and all that goes with it- was my last minute opportunity to make that happen.

So I’m excited to share with you today some before & after photos and details on how this project came together.

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Now, I’m no interior decorator by any stretch of the imagination. But I did know that the best way to make a small space feel bigger is to go with a lot of white. So I knew that I would be painting the walls and ceiling as white of a white as I could find. I also intended to paint all of the cabinets white. (And can I just say that in doing so, I discovered how terribly yellow my kitchen- which I’d always thought was a slight shade of off white- actually was?).

But because I do love color, and especially love red in my kitchen, I did not want to go with a totally washed out white look. So I chose red and what I like to call “vintage canning jar” aka the turquoise-ish color of old canning jars- as my accent colors. With just a touch of brown/wood to ground everything.

The first big thing to happen in this makeover, after moving everything out of my kitchen, was to take down the cabinet that hung on this wall. My original plan was to put in 3 floating shelves (I ended up only putting in 2, however, it just ended up looking better that way) using some old reclaimed lumber. These shelves were painted with several coats of paint, randomly, in shades of aqua and mint, white chalk paint and milk paint. They were then distressed both by hand sanding and by wet distressing to pull off some of the layers all the way down to the wood, and other layers down to the color below to give it an aged look while also pulling in that vintage canning jar color.

The tricky thing about open shelving is styling them in a way that is balanced lest you risk looking cluttered. And in a small space, you can go zero to cluttered in no time. And since I’m a bit of a collector of all things old, I have been known to get out of control with my collections and just want to put alll the things on my shelves.

So in sticking with my color scheme (which also helps keep things look clean and balanced and uncluttered), I arranged on the lower shelf the items that I use most- dry baking goods, for example- while putting up high those things I don’t use as much (such as the scale and the nut meat chopper). I then added in pieces that are just for looks- the antique bottles, pieces from my enamel collection, some of my vintage red handled utensils, and some favorite chicken figurines.

The walls and ceiling were skip trowel textured- mainly because I have zero patience for patching/sanding imperfections on the wall and making them disappear under paint. This way, I was able to patch the wall and then texture over it, giving them an old look while hiding all the imperfections. Win/win.

The cabinets were an interesting adventure. And by interesting I mean annoying. My plan had been to get them cleaned up, sanded, and painted first with chalk paint and then with milk paint so they would hopefully chip of randomly to make them look old without actually having to go out and replace my cabinets with something else. The idea was to get what was in my head into my kitchen for as little money as possible.

But of course, things don’t always go as planned, especially when you’re me and you are not a painter or even someone who enjoys painting in the first place.

So I get them all removed, cleaned, and sanded. You’re not supposed to have to prime with chalk paint which I was going to be using as my base, so away to painting I went. After my first coat of chalk paint, I noticed some yellowing that was coming through. I assumed this was the dreaded bleedthrough I’d read about, but I figured- hey, it’s pretty pale, let’s just paint another coat and it’ll be fine.

Well, it wasn’t fine. It was actually worse.

It looked like I’d taken a pale buttery yellow and had distressed the doors with it. Which I guess wouldn’t be so bad. But I didn’t want yellow and it just made them look dirty. So then I do some research and see that you can use a few coats of Shellac to seal the doors thus preventing any further bleedthrough. The problem with that, or so I was told, was that I then wouldn’t get my milk paint to chip, or it wouldn’t turn out the way I’d wanted it to.

Ugh. Total defeat. And here’s the deal: only half of my doors had bleedthrough. The other half didn’t. So I thought, “Okay. Let’s Shellac the doors that have the bleedthrough and I can still distress them, just not get the chippy effect I’d wanted. But since the other half didn’t need to be Shellac’d, I’d at least get those to chip and I’d have a mixture of distressed and chippy cabinets. Okay, I can live with that.

Next problem arose when I discover nobody in town carries Shellac, only a Shellac base primer. Whatever. It was white, it would work, at this point I wanted to throw in the towel but I just went for it come-what-may.

So I spray the problem doors with the Shellac base primer, and while they were drying I went ahead with a couple coats of the milk paint on my non-bleedthrough doors.

Once the primed doors were mostly dry, I went at them with the milk paint as well. And as they dry, I start seeing this amazing alligator crackling happen, and when I went after them with the sander, they start doing this awesome chippy thing that I was wanting in the first place.

In the words of my nephew, I was all like, “What. The. Butt.” Like, what-the-actual-butt. Capital letters. And throw in some exclamation points too.

So what do I do, I run out and spray the other doors with the primer, and follow up with a coat of the last of my milk paint which runs $16/pint and I refused to buy more. And what happens to them?

Absolutely Nothing. No alligator crackle. No chippy. No nothing.

Omg. What else could I do besides some wet distressing and sanding and make it all look very on purpose.

Which is what I did. And I actually really love it. I added a few coats of sealing wax and some hardware and let it be. I’d actually intended to use some antiquing wax but for now decided I like them as is.

It’s possible I was most excited- above all else- to get this dinosaur of a microwave out of my face- and my space- forever. For the last 6 years, this big black eyesore has been plaguing my kitchen’s existence. And mine. My husband, being the logical being that he is, didn’t understand why I would get rid of a perfectly functioning appliance. I really don’t think he knew I was totally serious about it either until I made him take it down at 6 AM before he went to work that day.

It left behind gaping holes from the hardware, but also left behind a 30-inch wide space that could finally breathe at last.

And so could I.

It was decided that the unused floating shelf from the original trio could be cut down and added in here to hold my bacon grease, chunky salt, garlic, and other items that I like to have close at hand when I’m cooking.

As far as the microwave goes, it’s now gone and in its place is a tiny compact microwave that sits in our laundry room for when I need to quick melt or soften some butter. Or reheat coffee. Because what else does the dumb thing get used for anyway?

Let’s talk lighting. Above the sink had been a 4-foot fluorescent box light. The other two kitchen lights were 1980’s fixtures that held all sorts of dead flies, no matter how much you tried to keep them emptied out.

But I was trying to do this project on the cheap, right? So as I started researching lighting options, I was reminded of the fact that I’m a thrifty soul, and I am a collector of many things, and I’m known to pick things up that are old and cool and that just might come in handy someday. Including old barn lighting that I’ve been using as decor in my garden.

The only problem was the fact that my garden is sitting under nearly 100 inches of snow and my memory was not exactly 100 percent certain of where these fixtures may be.

Thankfully, I had 2 of them in my porch. But the bigger one that I wanted for over the sink- I knew I had 2 of them out by my garden and I was pretty sure of the general area where one of them rested last fall. So I trudged out through snow up to my chest and, after a bit of digging, successfully located the fixture.

With some basic hardware we were able to replace all 3 of these lights.

Now let’s talk curtains. These old window frames were also in my garden:

And had to be dug out, which I did of course. The little bit of paint left on them was lead paint, which I removed entirely and then repainted and distressed. They were then mounted to my actual kitchen window frame with hinges so they can open if need be.

Then, after not finding any curtains that I liked, went ahead and ordered up some fabric and set to making curtains despite the fact that I haven’t used a sewing machine since Home Ec class 20 years ago. And the fact that I did not realize that an extra half yard of fabric gave me more length top to bottom- and not width from left to right- as my brain tricked me into thinking. Doh.

But they turned out just fine thanks to YouTube. Except for the fact that not 5 minutes after I put up the sink skirt did I splash sweet and sour pork juice all over them. No joke. What the butt, right? So I had to wash my dry-clean-only curtains, but they ironed out okay and peace was restored once again.

And that’s pretty much the end of the story. Oh, that pretty accent wall? That’s Sweetie Jane from Sweet Pickins milk paint. I don’t recommend painting a large wall with milk paint just because it’s costly. But a small wall space like this worked out okay.

I also don’t recommend thinking you have any idea how milk paint will turn out on a project. Sometimes it chips, sometimes it doesn’t, and it will mostly confuse you and not do what you want it to do.

But what I learned most through this project, beyond the frustrations and curve balls, was I really valued the opportunity to completely clear out a space and then be very intentional with how I arranged what I allowed to come back into it. I pared down drastically the amount of stuff not only on my shelves and above my cabinets, but also what I allowed to be out on my countertops. Working in a small kitchen with little counter space can be very limiting when you allow all the things to clutter up that valuable real estate. So as I brought each thing back into my kitchen, I had to ask myself how much I used it and where it should live.

And no, I did not ask myself if it brought me joy or talk to it as if it were real. No spank-you.

I hope if you have a small kitchen of your own, that I was able to inspire you to be intentional with your space. And proud of it! A total remodel isn’t necessary to make your small space both beautiful and functional.

While new flooring and a new sink and someday in my dreams a dishwasher are all desired, this fresh facelift has given me a renewed appreciation for this much loved room in my home.

Just in time for the busy season.

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thank you. Homestead on, my friends.